


The Flower That Blooms In Adversity

by LittleDesertFlower



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Minor Original Character(s), POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Promised Day, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Small Towns, with exceptions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 214,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower
Summary: She came to the north trying to find herself, but she found someone else.





	1. Iver up ahead

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not really sure how to label this, because while it’s meant as a sort of homage to one of my favorite characters from FMAB, it’s also the closest thing I’ve written to an original work (I’ve made so much stuff up for this one ^^) that I’m sharing with others and therefore one hell of a challenge.  
> But if there’s one thing I love in this world is stories (and I have so much love for this one), so here we go!
> 
>  
> 
> This fic is for Hikari, because she’s been listening to my delighted writer noises for as long as I was watching FMAB earlier this month and then later on as I told her all my crazy ideas for this fic. Sharing fictional stories with you and getting to explore so many headcanons has given me so much life, I love you <3 

Zinnia knew she would be happy here. Because it was nothing like the cities she knew, the lives she’d led before. If she looked up, the blue sky spread out towards the horizon like a mantle, welcoming her home in the place of the dull gray clouds at Central or the scorching sun in summer down south. It was a comforting shade of blue. It made the snowed-in summits of the mountain range in the distance all the more striking for spring, although she knew what she was getting into by travelling here. How couldn’t she? Nobody came north of North City unaware of the lurking cold, and those who did either perished or ran. Zinnia had heard a thing or two, so having snow a few miles north of where she’d be living didn’t seem too much of an inconsistence for the beautiful sun that was shining that day.

Back at North City, that city of compact low houses and buoyant activity, she’d arranged for a farmer to take her as far as the outskirts of what would be her new home. Riding backwards on the hay cart, she’d had to turn around to see the outline of the town, waiting behind the flora. Specks of boxy dwellings and a few trees dotting the landscape in green and amber, her first introduction to it was the road sign before crossing the bridge, where her kind driver had let her get off.

_Iver,_ it read. She almost snorted out loud. Someone had erased the ‘r’ from ‘river’ and thus the town had been named, probably. _Iver up ahead._

“There it is, think you can manage?” the man had told her once she was back on the ground. He was heading the other way, to his farm on the outskirts.

“Sure thing,” she’d said. There was no need to mention she knew this area almost by heart after some minor research, even if she’d never seen it in person before, so she simply thanked him and went on her way.

She didn’t have any heavy luggage, just a bag with some clothes, a notebook and a few pens in case her muse decided Zinnia was worth returning to. She could really fuck this up, big time, _bigger_ than the other times. She was miles and miles away from anything she was directly familiar with, jobless for the moment and with no plan other than walk around till she saw some shop that needed new staff and _politely_ offer to fill any vacancies.

But Zinnia walked across the bridge, trying not to think about it too much because, really, it wouldn’t fix anything at this point, and walked on.

There was even tall grass, she found, as she kept going through the dirt path. And _flowers_ , of the most disconcerting colors at that. Orange, brown, violet, white; their scent got in Zinnia’s nose, and she sneezed it out after a while. It was such a disappointing thing to see in a land that was barren for almost three seasons out of four. But still…new, in a way. It smelled that way, like the excitement she’d kept bottled up since she’d decided to take a train north and not come back to the South Area for a long long time.

There was nothing for her down there, there never had been. Just the novelty of a place and cities big enough that she could never get to know everybody. And there probably wouldn’t be much for her up north either. She’d seen flowers in the south, and villages on her way in the train.

She was going to be happy here for a while, till she learned every street and every road and knew how to travel across the vastness of North Area with her eyes closed. And then she’d find herself locked at home, bored out of her mind, never actually doing anything with all she knew. Never finding what she was looking for and denied she lacked. And later on, when the boredom got to her, she’d pack her bags and leave again, chasing a wind that never let her catch up.

Yet today was the first day, not the last. And even if that last day came to be, she wanted to walk to it confidently and happily. And she needed to get to know Iver first, and who she was while living there.

Zinnia took her time getting to the town, though, observing gently how nature unfurled underneath her shoes, around her tiny silhouette in such a mantle of plants and pasture. Like an intruder, she tried not to be noticed once she crossed into the literal town.

The main street was cobblestone and the few lamps in the main square, copper. And small. A few minutes later, after ambling around minor and narrow streets, she realized in dismay she’d already seen it all. Iver was barely a spot in a map, four or three streets, fifty or so dwellings, and open field all around it.

She made the best of efforts not to look up at the sky for solace, estranged and suddenly lonely in a place she was new to. Zinnia didn’t know much about the north, but she guessed that staying in the middle of nowhere looking grim was common ‘spot the odd one out’ behavior everywhere, and stuck to walking around again, trying to give off the impression that she was just another neighbor.

She kept an eye out of shops. There was a small shop that looked like a market compressed into one single room and that smelled too much like meat. She’d had enough of that for at least some more years, thank you very much. Of course, there was a tavern, but Zinnia took one look at the façade and the state of inhabitation there and span around in the opposite direction.

The sun was already pretty high up in the sky when she stopped in one of the minor streets, leaned on a wall by the shade, the weight of her luggage starting to make her arms ache (she really needed to work on that), and wiped the sweat off her forehead with her free hand.

“Hi there,” someone said, quickly approaching her.

Zinnia immediately wanted to make herself invisible. Where she was from, if someone called to you in a place like this, running was the most appropriate option. But she had to keep in mind that this was nothing like the places she knew.

“Oh, hi,” Zinnia said. “Hey.”

“I don’t know you, which means you’re new, correct?” The woman talking was short and plump and smiley, a few inches shorter than her.

“Correct.”

At Zinnia’s puzzled expression, the woman burst into laughter.

“Oh it’s a very small town,” she said, to appease her. “The last tenant we had moved away some time ago, and I spoke to Lynna the other day and she said she’d already rented it to someone else, which is rare around here to say the least.” The woman chuckled. “So, you’re _the_ someone else.”

Zinnia blinked a couple of times. She had no idea what was going on, but she decided to go with it. Lynna sounded just like the name of her landlady, and apparently this woman knew her?

“Yes, I’m Zinnia,” she said, reaching a hand out for the woman to shake.

The woman grinned at her. “Candie,” she said, shaking Zinnia’s hand vigorously, then letting go. “What is a girl like you doing just walking around? Haven’t you been at the house yet?”

“No, I was actually—” Zinnia started. “I hope this isn’t awfully rude of me, but… do you know of any place around here that needs some help?”

Candie laughed again. Zinnia had no idea what to make of so much laughter.

“I dearly hope you didn’t get to Iver looking for work, honey, there’s not a lot to do around here unless you like cattle.”

“I … don’t.”

“I figured as much,” Candie said, smirking and looking at Zinnia as if categorizing her already as a city girl. “As it turns out, though, I have a little bookshop just around the corner.”

_Everything is just around the corner here,_ Zinnia thought.

“I don’t exactly need help, and I certainly don’t pay much, but if you’re interested I’m there in the mornings.” The woman turned around to leave with a cute hand wave, then came back as if she’d remembered something important she needed to say. “Oh by the way, do you need any help finding your house?”

Zinnia smiled as sweetly as she could. She could probably be dropped alone three miles from here and find her house in record time without never having seen it before.

Her dad had used to ruffle her hair affectionately when he’d first realized his little girl wasn’t likely to ever get lost anywhere, having such an uncanny sense of direction as she did. It was as if she could smell her way, map it with all her senses and not get distracted by anything else.

“Our Zinnia could walk out of a blizzard unscathed and land right where she was supposed to arrive,” her dad had used to say to her mum as she chopped and prepared the meat for her customers.

“Thank you, but I’m covered,” Zinnia said now.

“Have a nice day, then!” Candie said, already walking away.

“You too…” Zinnia whispered under her breath. Then she kept moving.

Her house wasn’t too far, as it turned out, a small square thing in a corner of the town with brown tiles and graying yellowish walls that seemed too thick at first sight. She approached it slowly, her arms definitely tired of hurling the bag, and left it on the ground willy-nilly, then knocked at the door.

A blonde lady with tired eyes greeted her—Lynna, Zinnia supposed—and gave her a quick tour and her keys. Then she left Zinnia alone.

Zinnia sat in the small living room, all dark brown furniture that frankly both looked and smelled _old,_ and exhaled loudly.

“I’m going to be _happy_ here,” she lied to herself.


	2. Writing her portrait

“You get morning shifts, okay? Sometimes I might open in the afternoon, for the… you know, summer crowd.” Candie was telling her, leaning on one of the dusty shelves.

It was a big joke around here, the ‘summer crowd’. Iver hadn’t gained a new visitor in years. Every year there was some elderly person who died of old age and if the town got lucky, a baby was born at some point in the next decade or so to replace them. Zinnia had been a wonderful exception to the demographic stagnation. Lynna, her landlord, had told her (very non-briefly) during the house tour about how after her grandfather had died she’d kinda wanted to just do something with the place instead of sitting around and mulling over all that emptiness. Instead, now Zinnia got to sit around and mull in her stead, thinking ‘ _oh wait somebody actually died in this house_ ’ every time something creaked.

Maybe it wasn’t that farfetched, though, to be fearful of the unknown. There was a _lot_ Zinnia had tapped but never actually delved into. And now that she was going to sit in a bookshop for hours—small as it was—she’d find free time to read on more unexplored topics.

Countries she’d never visit, peoples across the world with customs that enchanted her as much as they surprised her. Well, at least here up north she was getting to know _one_ people better. The northerners. And their summer jokes.

“Got it. Summer crowd in summer,” Zinnia said, nodding and laughing. “So, how many people _actually_ come here in the summer?”

Summer, also, meant just good weather conditions. It was probably summer to the people at Iver right now, although June was still pretty far away.

“Briggs soldiers, mostly,” Candie said. “But they just come to town for the food, mind you. And they stick it out to the fall, too. Oh, and sometimes people from North City. They’re not that bad, for… you know, _southerners._ ”

Everything below Iver on a map was, inarguably, _south_ —no matter how far north it was in comparison to everything else. There was a farmer living a mile away from town, and his nickname was Southy.

“Got it.”

“It’s an easy job, Zinnia, dear. Don’t worry about it,” Candie said, laughing softly, and reading the other woman’s discomfort rather easily. “Just look for any book they might want, write it down if it’s not here—which might happen from time to time, depending on who asks—and I’ll consider getting someone from North City to order it for me. But that takes some time, and only applies in the summer, of course.”

“Of course.” Zinnia repeated, her mind already drifting off to other things. Maybe roads were cut off in the winter and that’s why they couldn’t order new books? Could it be that bad? It couldn’t be that bad. Maybe Candie was just… too lazy to place the orders. Who even wanted complicated consultation books here anyway?

“So that’s about it for today. Now go have some fun, you’re young.”

“I’m not that…” Candie dismissed her with a hand wave, and Zinnia cut her sentence short. _Young…_

She just looked it. It was the soft skin, the short hair, and the endless parade of emotion-ridden faces. It made her look fresh into her twenties. But she was far from those days. She was an _adult,_ in theory as well as in practice. Feeling like it was another story. She had too many holes in this… strange experience of a life to call herself a complete adult with her future all spread out neatly for her to dive into. Hell, she hadn’t even decided what she wanted to do with it.

Write stories for other people to sell, like she would do here? Tour the world incessantly from one silly job to another, meeting people whose names blurred in her head when trying to remember them, come back home years later to run the family butchery?

“This will one day be yours, Zinnia, like it or not,” her mother had said some time back, before Zinnia was thinking of escaping life in the little provincial town they lived in, near Central. Zinnia had liked the shiny knives that cut through meat as if it were water, and dealing with the clients and their gossip, and living close to her friends, but that had never been for her.

_Maybe it’ll have to be at some point_ , she thought now. _Mum was right, I’ll be the rightful owner after them._ But she’d never be a butcher. That family inheritance would die when her parents did.

Zinnia grabbed a chair from one of the small and half-empty restaurants in the main street, said hi to the owner, and sat down in the sun. For a few minutes, she just paid attention to everything that caught her eye. Iver’s pseudo-butcher’s yells were audible even a few streets away, and the neighbor next door was brewing coffee: the smell of it reached her as well, sweet and strong. Some other neighbors crossed the main street, saying hi to her like she’d been living there for months instead of days. Like she finally belonged somewhere, in spite of her thin clothes and a quieter sense of humor than they were used to around here.

_Small towns,_ she thought, smiling. And then she leaned over to grab her notebook from her bag.

This was easy, observing. Information flying around for her to capture and twist until all that came out was a nice liquid juice of words she’d never solidify. Putting them on paper, on the contrary… That would prove to be a worthy challenge.

Quickly, she scribbled something on a piece of paper, ripped it from her notebook and put it on top of her big straw hat on the cobblestone so it was visible for the public.

WRITTEN PORTRAITS FOR 200 CENTZ

Then she crossed her legs, content with the idea, and started writing her first portrait of the day. The breeze flowing around her seemed to take her far away, to that place in her mind where writing was made a little bit easier.

_And if I had to name for this place, I wouldn’t call it ‘Iver’, of all things. There’s little about this town that reminds me of water, of a river without an ‘r’. It’s more like blood, flowing in the same direction, evenly. Like clockwork. Every hour, my next-door asks her next-door how things are going until a conversation starts, except at night. And every night, I look up at the sky to find that the stars are in a different spot than the night before, just like sometimes people stray from their path for a little while, then resume it as if nothing had happened. As if nothing was bleeding. But, to be honest, ‘blood’ is a pretty sanguinary thing to name a town. Perhaps I should remove the ‘b’, but then the double ‘o’ would sound different, wouldn’t it?, and where’s the fun in that?_

A few minutes later, one of the residents came up to her and asked for a portrait. Zinnia told her neighbor to wait around for a few minutes and that she’d have it in no time. She wasn’t really much of a tenacious writer, words were chopped out of her like slices of bark from a tree trunk, but it was a start.

It helped that she’d only met these people a few days ago. Their faces were fresh in her mind, and she could recall the first impression she’d had of them and compare it to now, when they behaved around her the same way they did among themselves.

After this one woman, some more people came over, smiling, pleasantly surprised at the novelty, and loud. Wonderfully loud, taking space like they were proud of being in it, like they were certain they had a right to be right there right then and make it theirs openly for the world to see.

And when Zinnia looked up, laughing with them, legs crossed in the spring sun, that’s when she saw _her_.

Olivier Armstrong.

Perhaps it should’ve made Zinnia question things already, how she recalled the name so easily without having never seen her before. The Amestrian military had few women among their forces, fewer even in the highest ranks. She was the only one, ever, to make it to general. It was common knowledge, the tales of the woman up north who kept Drachma away with her unwavering discipline. There were other rumors, less carefully worded, which Zinnia had paid no mind to. She’d grown up in a town close to the heart of the military at Central, and there were always news of scandals and coups d’état, disorganization and treason. Leave them to rule, but don’t question them much or they might burn your city to the ground like they’d done with Ishval, claiming civil war. That way, none of the casualties were officially their fault.

A bunch of bullshit. Although, Zinnia thought, it had to take _balls_ to be one among many, even in such a questionable institution. A woman in a world of men, and angry resentful men with a thirst for supremacy, to make matters worse. _She must be a force to be reckoned with,_ Zinnia thought to herself, and kept watching her move across Iver’s main street. She was alone, tugging at the reins of a brown-coated horse, and walked past every establishment like she owned it and already knew what waited for her inside. Maybe she did own them, the Armstrongs were pretty rich. The hooves of her horse clacked softly against the pavement when they moved from shop to shop, not really stopping anywhere.

“Hey, Zinnia, you with us?” some of her neighbors were saying to her, kind of worried that she wasn’t responding. That’s when she realized she’d been far away from the present moment. Truly far away.

“Oh shit, sorry, yeah. Just gimme a few minutes, it’ll be done soon.”

They left, and Zinnia looked at her piece of paper, intently, almost begging the portrait to come forth at once. She had to make the words pop up or she’d disappoint her new neighbors. She, also, _forced_ herself to look at the notebook. If she looked up, she’d get distracted with something else, something shiny that stood up in this sea of routine. Something that, for some reason, had made her completely lose her train of thought.

  _The first time that I—_ She wrote it down, then scratched it off. Maybe using the first person hadn’t exactly been a bright idea, it felt like she was five and at school writing an assignment on something that wouldn’t stick later, something without a soul. Did her writings truly _ever_ have a soul?

_Coming here, it’s hard not to be swept away by the p—_ No, that wouldn’t work either. None of this would work. Her heart wasn’t on it, suddenly.

_What do you want, heart? Do you want company and sun? Well, it’s all around you. Just write about it, then I’ll get you home to the shade and some book or something,_ she thought to herself. Words were supposed to be her thing, what she’d _chosen_ to do, even if it wasn’t a job. But she felt like she wasn’t _words’_ thing.

She sighed, almost groaning in dissatisfaction; she wasn’t going to write this commissioned portrait she couldn’t get out of her, was she? And she almost tortured herself for it.

Almost.

The words—the wrong words—flew, just like water. Moved inside her onto the notebook like clouds in the sky, flawlessly. Always in the right direction, always true. And she almost tortured herself for it.

Almost.

Her neighbors were gonna come back any second now, asking for progress, asking to see themselves reflected in her words, and she had close to nothing, she barely had anything. And what she had, she couldn’t give to _them._

“Selling on the street is not permitted,” said an authoritative voice, breaking the next sentence in Zinnia’s head before she’d even finished it, and making her startle on her chair. Zinnia immediately looked up, trying to find the source of such power, but the sun was in her way. She shifted a little to the left to avoid its radiance.

Long blonde hair and blue—the bluest blue there was—met her eyes. Zinnia blinked a few times, blinded by the light.

“Sorry. What?”

“You can’t sell anything here.”

“Oh, I’m not _selling_ …” Zinnia went on to explain, blushing redder than she was supposed to for something as silly as this. She was about to grab the slapdash sign she’d made. “I write portraits, I—”

“That’s not a job,” Olivier said harshly. Zinnia immediately sat straight, letting go of her sign. “Get off my streets.”

She barely glanced at Zinnia for a second before her horse neighed and she started walking on like there had never been anything to see here.

“ _Your_ streets?” Zinnia said out loud. Perhaps too loudly. Perhaps too soon.

“The streets,” Olivier immediately corrected herself without an ounce of hesitation. “Get off the streets.” She sounded just as disinterested and just the slightest bit annoyed by the encounter, but Zinnia couldn’t get her eyes off of her and there definitely _was_ something else there.

She’d been watching Olivier for a few minutes too long earlier not to be able to tell now.

Olivier had … actually, really… been looking back at her before she’d walked away?

A whole whirlpool with bullet noise as background music, that’s what Olivier was feeling as it crawled out of her onto the reality of this sun-lit square. Ianthe’s face, Ianthe’s hand on her face drifting away from eternity.

“Leave. Before I change my mind and chase after you and never go”, Olivier had said. And Ianthe’s green eyes were sad and wise beyond their years, as she had turned back for a moment to say:

“Just remember, when you’re looking for something to place the blame on, that it was your ambition that did this.”

The worst part was that it hadn’t been ambition what had kept Olivier from dropping her sword in the train station in Central and running after her that day. She would have given up everything for that to be the case. But the truth was that what had kept her ankles dug on the cold concrete ground wasn’t ambition or thirst for more power or even loyalty to the organization that had become her family. It was the wish to protect that one person she would probably die in battle for. The wish to keep her safe from this—from the destruction and the chaos and the impossible life of a woman in the military. _A life for a life_ , Olivier had thought, watching Ianthe leave forever. One single tear had streamed down her face, already crystalized in one ephemeral snowflake before it hit the ground and melted.

Now, years later, it was Olivier that was walking away rather than pushing someone to. She’d come down to Iver for some distraction from the men shouting profanity at Briggs about provisions, and she was suddenly and without a single warning getting caught up in something a lot more energy-consuming than that. A war she hadn’t thought for too many years that she had chances of losing.

“Hey, wait,” Zinnia called to her. Olivier turned around once more, cold as ice. “Keep this, as a token of good faith. Or proof,” she said, ripping the page she’d been writing on from notebook and offering it to Olivier. “Whatever you’ll take it as. But take it.” Zinnia’s eyes were honest in their offer, if perhaps a bit… tentative. “Please.”

Her heart echoed loud in her ears, reminding her that doing this, and doing this _now_ , was stupid. And that she was probably going to regret it. She didn’t even _like_ this woman, or what she represented, or the place she occupied in the world. She didn’t even _know_ her. But, well, Zinnia didn’t really know any of her neighbors either, did she? And she’d written them kind words anyway.

Olivier took the folded piece of paper in her hands, slowly, almost distrusting it. And she kept it folded, in fear, perhaps, that if she opened it it would explode in her face like a grenade. For a second, Zinnia was almost certain she was going to rip it to shreds in front of her. But, after what seemed like a few minutes, she didn’t.

Without a word, Olivier walked on, dragging her horse behind, and she didn’t look back now. Some wars, she’d never win. 

* * *

 

_Tall, well-built, standing over the world in her permanent strong stance,_

_it’s not very hard to imagine why she’s been called The Impregnable Wall of Briggs for so long._

_Olivier Armstrong would protect the entire world on her own_

_from the dangers lurking outside of her city, and she would succeed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the Ice Queen has made her entrance ^^


	3. Fifteen years

“Hey, boss, you brought any good stuff?” said the new guy as soon as Olivier and the other men who’d rode down to Iver that day entered the common room. Everybody immediately fell silent in their own conversations and looked down at their cups of muddy coffee, but whether out of respect for privacy or out of intimidation it was hard to tell; their faces were still like tree bark in a windstorm.

Olivier had just gone in, practically facing the reality of being _back_ like a bull charging forward—head fucking on. She needed to ease back into the mentality she’d developed to match this place’s. _Survival of the fittest means that as long as you’re temporarily not fit, your chances of surviving decrease. Do you want to give up on survival, General Armstrong?_ she told herself. _Then you know what to do._

She had to embrace her title of The Northern Wall of Briggs again. There were many names that had come with that one, and she welcomed them all in. She _was_ the impenetrable wall that kept the north safe, she _was_ a bitch among bastards, she _was_ cold as the ice she’d been made queen of. She embraced it all, felt it cool her down. Now she’d see the world the way she meant to: no grays, just black and white. Just truth and lies. Fact and manipulation.

It’d all been briefly stripped away from her by recent circumstances that were, unluckily, outside of her control. But she’d regain her vision now. Completely.

 Standing tall by the coffee machine, she finished pouring herself some coffee, then turned around slowly.

“Austin!” she called. “Tell the people at the kitchen you’ll take over all the dish-washing tonight. Till first light. And I’ll see you during morning watch.”

The man paled, tried to look for support from his colleagues but they were all silent as tombs, conveying perfectly the message Austin should’ve learned on his first night: _do not confront the General unless it’s life-or-death._

“B-boss?” the soldier was probably gulping in discomfort right now at the thought of spending an entire night washing hundreds of plates and cutlery and then rejoining the other men keeping watch like he’d actually gotten some sleep. How many people lived at the fort? Enough to get him through the night working at top speed, that was for sure. He _wasn’t_ getting any sleep, was this even legal?

“That’s _general_ to you,” Olivier barked. “Catch up to the rules or I’ll deport you back to Central, are we clear?” She wasn’t going to, the paperwork it entailed was too elaborate and she didn’t have any need for it. But it was a threat that worked because it was a display of power, and the newbies feared that more than they feared the winter cold.

Then she grabbed her cup of coffee and finished crossing the room without even waiting for an answer. Her head hurt, and the last thing she needed was dealing with the soldiers that had come right out of the bleaker sides of the country, always used to warmth and good food and the nurture of their commanding officers.

Olivier almost smiled to herself as she slammed the door behind her. He’d have none of that here, the sooner he got used to it the better. 

* * *

 

Zinnia sat down in front of what looked like the oldest telephone in existence; she doubted it would even work. For a few days now, she’d definitely been avoiding this. She should’ve just done the thing when she’d first gotten settled there but she hadn’t, for some reason. Probably fear of Anthony slamming a ‘ _I told you so, I told you that wouldn’t be your home either_ ’ down on her.

He didn’t, though. He picked up like he’d seen Zinnia the day before, and caught her up with the town gossip before he dared to ask softly:

“So, how’s the north treating you?”

“It’s… chilly for spring, but not unpleasantly. And there’s… flowers.” She shuddered at the thought. “I didn’t think there’d be any, it’s the _north._ ” Zinnia paused to think about something of interest she could add to that. So far it’d been a lame thing to say. “And like, everybody’s already used to me. It feels like I’ve been here forever.”

Her tone made it clear that wasn’t a positive thing.

“So, you think you’re gonna stay there? Forever, I mean.”

He sounded genuine. Zinnia wanted to thank him for that. Distant but genuine was something she could appreciate.

“I don’t know.” _Should I?,_ she thought. “Is that like super important and I’m only now hearing about it as an important concept?”

“At least the last place was closer to home, Zin,” Anthony mumbled.

She wished he’d just said ‘I miss you’ like a normal person, like her parents normally did, instead of baiting her to get back, to stop pursuing something she didn’t even think was real anymore. But he’d done the same thing for the five years she’d been away, going from place to place. Anthony just wasn’t going to change. Neither was she, for that matter. They’d just have to work around that, decide if those were stable enough foundations for their friendship.

“Hey you’re welcome to just get on a train and come see me,” she said. “There’s plenty of room in this house.”

“Yeah, why not?” he said in a tone that clearly implied the opposite.

“But come now that’s warm-ish. Winters are rumored to be something else.”

Anthony snorted. The conversation was _that_ dead. She wanted to cry at the realization. He was the only person she felt she could talk to about things, even if he was kind of blasé about everything and required occasional showers of reality. But he mostly understood, and listened. And knew to come to her when he needed something to.

Where had all of that gone?

“Northerners, am I right?” he teased.

“Yeah, definitely...”

Zinnia was about to tell him about what had happened to her that day on the square, but she bit her lip right in time. She had mixed feeling about that encounter, it’d been so awkwardly ill-timed, such bad luck too... She wasn’t really sure she wanted to bring it up with Anthony, of all people. He was a sweetheart most of the time, but there were memories they both shared that some comments she might make today wouldn’t really help with.

“I’m glad you’re doing okay,” Anthony said honestly.

“Yeah,” she said, trying to smile although he wouldn’t see. Reflex, she supposed, from those times when she had forced herself to in front of him just to make him happy. “Thanks for picking up.”

“Hey, I always pick up.”

“You know what I meaaannn,” Zinnia said. “Thank you.”

He laughed, then sighed.

“Nighty night, don’t freeze over.”

“Fuck you,” she said affectionately, and hung up the phone.

The empty room echoed that last sigh of hers, and she just asked herself out loud: “So… now what?”

It wasn’t that late, really, but here the sun set earlier than down south. She’d miss the light, though. She took off her clothes, brushed her teeth, and set to bed, grabbing one of the few books she’d brought all the way with her, and eventually ditching it for her own notebook.

Zinnia usually would never reread something she’d written, especially if it was short and pointless, which it was more often than not. Tonight, though, draped in rough-at-touch sheets that smelled like closed spaces and ice, she wished she’d written _more_. The words were sloppy, too charged with emotions she wasn’t even sure were really hers. But they made for good poetic prose, for a detailed yet sentimentally vague portrait of someone she’d probably never see again. But there’d been something about her… intriguing, in a way.

A woman of the military, in charge of an entire fortress and god knew what else, walking alone through the smallest town in existence, and stopping to tell _her_ off. And for something so stupid, too. If she hadn’t been so intent in her telling her off, Zinnia would’ve thought Olivier had just chosen the first excuse that came to mind to publicly embarrass her.

Zinnia hid her face in the covers, pulling at the sheets so they’d cover her up to the nose. She had felt so stupid, out of place. Which was weird, since everybody here made sure she was always included as one of them, as part of the cycle of life. She’d felt like the different child again, the weird one that liked uncommon things and spoke too much of things nobody cared about.

Zinnia should’ve fucking told Anthony about this. Maybe it would’ve hurt his long-gone feelings, but he would have probably had something intelligent that made sense to say to her, if not something honest and reassuring.

She was going to need a bucketful of that if she planned to survive here without losing her mind. And she was _fucked,_ Anthony lived too far away and knew nothing about anything up here. She’d have to make new friends who understood the way of life in the north and could tell her more about the people she would have to deal with.

But it definitely was not the thought of new friends that she fell asleep to that night. The last thing she’d remember the next morning was being enraptured by the warmest, purest shade of blue, around her when she needed it more and was most terrified to speak up about it. 

* * *

 

There was a knock on the door. Miles came in a few seconds later without waiting for her to say he could or growl at him to get out. It almost made her snort out loud that he knew with all certainty she’d still be in there in spite of the late hour. The small round windows at Fort Briggs had stopped letting in enough light to work in a few hours ago.

“Nothing new on the Mountain Men?” Miles asked. It was too late for him to still be up and working, too. Everybody else was fast asleep in their bunks, except for those on watch and Austin (who Olivier hoped had followed orders and was washing dishes), and the fort was quiet as the sea in a windless evening. Not even the pipes made a noise.

“No, their messenger reported back earlier. Everything’s quiet out there,” Olivier said without looking up from the paperwork that she might as well be married to by now after fifteen years. It piled up even if she worked twice as fast through it. Then, after a few seconds of silence that meant Miles hadn’t left yet, she looked up: “Go to bed, Miles. I’ll need you fresh in the morning.”

“I have a bad feeling about this, sir.”

“We all do. It’s Drachma. But they’ll still be there for you to worry about tomorrow.” It was a useful lesson to learn. “Get some sleep, soldier. That’s an order.

“You too, sir,” he said, and left without another word.

Fifteen years, and everything still orbited around the same fucking thing. It made time pass slower, thicker. The same conflict, over and over, manifesting in new ways. Day after day, Olivier woke up having to remind herself that this was how it’d always be. Keeping an invasion from happening while looking for a way to preemptively invade first. More territory, more control, more of everything. Briggs was the ‘m’ to that ‘more’, and she was the one to decide how the strings would be pulled in order to get there. If they ever did. For now, it was enough of a success that they managed to keep Drachma at bay.

Her men were ready. If there truly were Drachman men trying to cross the mountains, her subordinates would find them. And all there’d be left to do, after hearing them out, was decide whether it made more sense to kill them to send a message or send them back and kill all hope of ever getting the upper hand.

Olivier knew which one she’d choose.

As long as the north was safe, did any of that really matter? It was just mere details, she didn’t even know if any of the people at her fort wanted the upper hand. All of this, all of this elaborateness around her, was simply there as an addition, a way to solidify that Briggs stood and continued to stand. Years ago, she’d read about the history behind this fort, about how the first men to be sent north were few and far between, living in the foundations of the wall that would later be built when Drachma grew violent and war dawned on them as a reality rather than a distant omen. This had started as something so simple… She had to remind herself of that, of what really mattered, if she wanted to continue doing her best job. The job nobody wanted…

Because it was always cold up north (lies), because it was more of a diplomatic dance than a real conflict (lies as well, _she_ was the one who made a negotiation of sorts of this rather than carnage, and occasionally it still circled back to direct confrontation), because the food was terrible and the water tasted like salt (not lies), because being at the top of a wall required vision and temperance like nothing else (also not lies) and a rare number of people on this country had what it took to commandeer so many soldiers as one, to keep them all safe. Fort Briggs had not had a casualty for as long as she’d been their general.

And Olivier would be lying if she said this wasn’t what she wanted. It was just that today had reminded her of what she’d used to want alongside with this, in the past, and what she’d inevitably ended up giving up on. All in the name of duty. But perhaps there’d been no duty, perhaps she’d just been scared.

Fifteen years. She hadn’t had words like these addressed to herself for fifteen years. And now, after so long, after willingly sacrificing so much, including her personal life, those words had made it back into her life when she’d least expected them to.

_Olivier Armstrong would protect the world on her own from the dangers lurking outside of her city…_

She shook her head, elbows on her desk, and rubbed at her temples. Fifteen years of dutifully protecting the north, of never-ending shifts. And now all of a sudden everything she’d worked for felt empty and bleak, worth for nothing except sleeplessness and headaches. All for some stupid words anybody could’ve written?

_I should be the one washing dishes until morning,_ Olivier thought to herself in defeat. This was as absurd as a private calling her ‘boss’, after all. 

* * *

_T_ _here were never any letters. Olivier had waited for them, even if she knew they’d never come. She’d had the last word, and had chosen to make it silent. There’d be no follow-up to this, nothing that’d allow her to move on._

_The men around her breathed too loud, took too much space, snored at night like the room wasn’t filled with fifty other people. Stomped on their way to the communal bathrooms, told rude jokes to each other when she walked past them, especially those above her. Especially at first._ Pigs _, she’d used to think._

_She missed being on the other side of that, being loud and young in a small room in her parents’ huge house with someone worth making noise with. She missed sharing a bathtub and sneaking Ianthe into her small bed at headquarters when she was asked to spend the weekend there, training at day. She missed looking into those small angry eyes and knowing Ianthe and hers matched, for some reason—whatever it was, however twisted. She missed whispering incredibly obscene things to her ear when people were around because it always made Ianthe angrier and smaller and yet… she’d always melted in Olivier’s arms in seconds, after, when they were finally alone._

_Where was all that? Days ago, she’d had it. Days ago, she’d ached to lose it, but knew she had to let it go. Days ago she’d closed the casket on this, and now she knew for sure Ianthe wouldn’t reopen it._

But why did it have to hurt so much now? Why did it feel like she was rubbing salt in the wound? It wasn’t even a recent wound… it wasn’t a—

Olivier opened her eyes. It was such old pain, indeed. Why would she be dreaming about something so old? So irrelevant now… She didn’t even accurately remember what Ianthe had looked like up close, or where her moles were, or the exquisite feel of her fingers on her. It’d been too many years to remember, fifteen years too many.

And everything she’d carried with her all the way to Briggs in remembrance, in her youth, was all gone now, then why did it still _hurt_? Hadn’t she made sure to fill those holes with more important things, things that would keep her country safe, her people safe, herself safe?

Hadn’t she made sure neither her body nor her mind ever felt the world crumbling around her because of a woman again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't noticed up until now just how goddamn _nice_ it feels to write about life up north ^^, I'm enjoying writing this fic a lot (more than I should, probably hehehe)


	4. Tiramisu in the sun

Buccaneer heard her coming before he saw her appear under the thin light of the corridor. She stomped rather than walked—always had, as far as he was concerned. It was what told her apart when she toured around Briggs on her own. She tended to. Everybody else at Briggs was always with someone, but if she had any place to go to, she did so on her own. Most of the time she just ditched both Buccaneer and Miles if she could, she didn’t need an entourage.

“Good morning, sir,”

Olivier growled in response. It was hardly ever a ‘good morning’.

“Any news?” she asked.

“There’s no new reports. We’re still waiting.”

She nodded curtly. It would still be a few days, most likely, until the soldiers she’d sent to the mountains were back.

 They began walking together—a rarity—while they discussed the Drachma issue, as ever. The situation wasn’t much improved, they hadn’t had any developments in a while. Drachma didn’t come forward with any sort of offence, but its army was there, somewhere, concealed and waiting to pounce. As long as it stayed that way, there was nothing much that could be done except waiting them out.

As it was customary, Olivier made sure to catch a glimpse of the newbies, not because she felt any interest in _how_ they were adapting, but rather to see if they were adapting at all as they should be by now. If Briggs was clockwork, somebody needed to stay on top of rusty gears.

Predictably, they ran into Austin, a thin mess of a man almost falling asleep against a wall. Not much of an impressive sight to behold.

“Soldier,” she called. “You’re on your mark.”

“As-as you ordered, sir,” he said, trying not to yawn in front of his commander.

“Good,” she replied simply, approvingly.

“Sir.”

She and Buccaneer continued on their way, there was nothing else to see here. Everybody else was on watch duty as well, what with it being so early in the morning. She’d have to climb to the top of the wall to ensure everything was going normally there as well; maybe later…

“Make sure he leaves for bed as soon as his shift is over.”

Buccaneer frowned.

“He will anyway,” she clarified. “Just wake him after a while. There’s things to do.”

Today, of all days, the plans for the tank were finally getting the get-go. Or so Olivier hoped. She’d seen the beasts in Drachman lands, years ago. She was being realistic by anticipating to them having improved their warfare and preemptively upgrading her own.

He chuckled. “I’ll make sure to do that.”

“And _stop_ making that face, Captain,” she barked at him. “This is none of your business, just do as you’re told.”

Buccaneer merely nodded at her, ready to leave. But she could tell he was biting back a smile. It was obvious why; he thought all of this funny, how couldn’t he? He knew exactly the kind of woman she was, the bastard. 

* * *

 

She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving.

They didn’t need her. To be frank, they’d only needed her at first. For adherence, so their cohesive unit of a body would have a head. But lately Olivier was merely a puppeteer. Her days of glory had long since passed. All they did around the fort was rebuild broken things, innovate, and fend Drachma off.

She didn’t really have to be present for much of that, she just _was_ because she took interest. Can’t run a place if you don’t know it well. She merely signed reports back and forth for the idiots at Central Command, demoted or promoted people either under orders or personal decision, and made sure to keep the particularly idiotic alive since the rest knew how to handle themselves.

She left the fort again that day because this spring season promised to be quite lenient on the north, and she had better take advantage on this weather before it started to get unbearably dry on her skin. Plus, even if the food was generally terrible up there, it was a little bit better than the one at Briggs’ kitchen, caught up between mountains and trapped under the unforgiving sun and any storm that loomed over the land.

She rode down to Iver that afternoon, looking for nothing but a bit of fresh air (as if she didn’t have access to that atop her wall. She was honestly disappointed with her lying-to-herself skills).

There were a few instances along the lines of ‘good day, General Armstrong’ coming from people who were already used to seeing her from time to time. But she didn’t stop to reciprocate any greeting and instead just went right where she always went. To drown the spring mood in sweet food.

The place-owner saw her enter and already knew what she wanted. This was the only bakery slash cake shop in miles and miles, and she wasn’t really much of a regular but a … familiar face.  Familiar enough she wouldn’t have to speak much.

The man handed her a plate of her favorite dessert and a spoon and she sat down in the tables in the street, halfway in the sun halfway in the shade. The gentle light of late March shone down on her. It made her feel like she belonged to this soil, even if she’d been born somewhere else.

She was from the north, after all. Not by blood, not by birth. But she was. The north was hers, and she was the north. She had her reputation to uphold, and then a reputation everybody attributed to her. Life was thus, and she couldn’t fight _life_ off, much as she wished to.

But she was getting soft lately, it wasn’t escaping her as much as she pretended it was. Months ago, she would’ve walked past sleepy Austin without paying him any mind. She wouldn’t have felt bad for it, either. He would have never called her ‘boss’ again, would have learned his place, and would have interiorized what his role was in her community, what was expected of him until she let him go or promoted him.

Some people had been at Briggs longer than she had, especially Buccaneer. He was older than her by far, older than most around here. He’d seen the early days of the Briggs she knew. People like him and Miles—who’d arrived years later when Olivier had already been general—had stayed, loyal to the north and the fort, and would probably die here, where they all belonged. But then there were soldiers who came and went, sent up there by superiors who sought to punish them or harden them. These men served their time at Briggs and then returned to wherever they’d come from only to be replaced by a new legion of newbies. Newbies normally didn’t last long. Olivier wasn’t sure she wanted them to, she was used to seeing the same faces in the morning, to using the same names. Having to learn new ones wasn’t exhausting, but it wasn’t routine either. It took effort, and time that she didn’t want to have.

Normally, she would let them be, teach them what she could, make them fit perfectly into the dynamics of the fort. That, she was extraordinary at: leading, being in charge. Lately, though, she’d grown tenderer with them, permissive, even … kind. In her own way, of course.

But it was hard not to be so at times. She remembered, poorly as it was, what it felt like to be new to the coldest harshest place in the country. She had her scars to show for it. Other people didn’t need to in order to become one of _her_ people; that was the only source to her particular kindness.

She’d need to stop cutting them all slack as if it were meat, though. She was going to return to her old ways, back when she’d kept Miles by her side out of practicality, not sympathy. Or that’s what she told herself. Miles had been needed. Sorely. Amestris couldn’t be held together by force of one limited point of view, there were many more to consider, many more to fight from. Defending a country is more than just standing up for a mere region of it.

_Perhaps there won’t be any more situations when I need to be who they think I am,_ she thought to herself.

And as she did, she realized there was someone in the middle of the square that wasn’t supposed to be there, was she?

_That woman again,_ Olivier thought. _I told her to get lost._

She had, certainly, turned a deaf ear. People didn’t just do that and got away with it. Olivier had given a direct order, it wasn’t like she’d slacked off and just said something bland. Olivier had not said a bland thing since she was five.

This was… _insubordination_. Of sorts. The woman was a civilian, clearly. Too happy to blend in, too happy sitting there in the sun, scribbling on her notebook. Like it didn’t matter, like it wasn’t… disruptive.

_The Impregnable Wall of Briggs,_ she’d called Olivier. She was more than used to all the possible turns of the usual phrase— _The Northern Wall of Briggs—,_ yet this one resonated in her with novel nuances. She wasn’t all too sure what hid behind that choice of words: ‘impregnable’. Surely not good, but still… the rest of the text hadn’t felt aggressive to her. On the contrary, if anything.

Finishing the last of her tiramisu with all the time in the world, although she really didn’t have it, Olivier kept an eye on the girl. She was just… there, taking up space as if there was plenty in this crammed town. Smiling at passersby and writing them things that they accepted graciously. It shook things up in this town that was so used to its own inner rhythm, but she was part of them already. They treated her as such.

Perhaps she _was_ and Olivier had simply not picked her out from the Iver crowd before. But that argument was easily debunked by the fact that Olivier was positive she _would have_ if the girl had been always there. Olivier wasn’t one to be completely oblivious to the people around her, especially those that just had _something_ to them—

She stopped right there. There was nothing unusual in the writing girl, nothing _at all_. Nothing _to_ observe. Just a girl on a chair selling fake stories to people, making a bigger chaos than she had to. Olivier frowned as intensely as her face would go. A girl who didn’t seem to know pants existed, apparently…

During the two days Olivier had seen her, she’d been wearing flowery dresses like she was spring turned human. She probably smelled like spring too, like sunny warmth and grass and the soft breeze. It was infuriating. Olivier had to do something, she had to _make it clear_ to that woman she couldn’t just … go on doing whatever she was doing. Not after yesterday’s incident.

Nobody stood up to Olivier, nobody. She _had_ to do something, didn’t she? She had to act. Raise her voice. Be noticed. Win. Or else she’d be letting Buccaneer’s completely biased and inaccurate point of view win over hers. She’d be being soft and weak again.

And nobody north of North City survived on weakness and softness and holding back necessary words.

So she left her plate on the small table and a few centz to pay for her self-indulgence, then stomped all the way across the square to the girl in the dress with that ridiculous wide grin that just seemed to attract people.

This time around, Zinnia saw her coming. It was hard not to, she was a tall woman dressed in blue and with a sword almost as large as she was. She _stood out_. Inevitably. And in fact, Zinnia was thankful for that. Deeply. Not having seen her coming would’ve resulted in as awkward a situation as the other day’s.

No, this time she was ready. She closed her notebook, a torn-off page sticking out a little, and held it nervously on her lap, hands shielding it from the sun.

“Afternoon, Major General.” Zinnia was particularly proud of that only before she’d said it. Everybody just went around calling her ‘General’, because it was shorter and flowed easier, so maybe using something as specific as that wasn’t the best thing to do if she wanted to pretend she was perfectly above anything related to _the_ general.

Olivier seemed to think along the same line. She slit her eyes at Zinnia and hissed:

“I thought I was very clear with you.”

“Yes, you were,” Zinnia reassured her. “I’m not selling today, just writing for free. Is that okay?”

Olivier’s each and every brain cell was put up to the arduous task of thinking up a logical reason to keep going, but all that was coming to mind was the truth: that it was, in fact, okay.

_I guess I can’t fucking banish her now, can I?_

“This is not a real occupation,” Olivier said instead. “I would suggest you enroll in something actually prolific if you want to survive around here.”

But Zinnia had prepped for that too. _Survival, ha!_ Zinnia knew herself, she knew she was like a weed in that she would always make it hard for people to get rid of her. But, in all honesty, if Olivier had pressed things just a little further, using her body language and the presence her voice had, Zinnia might’ve lost it right there right then and become a stuttery little fool.

“Who’s to say I haven’t already?” She smiled as radiantly as she could. If this military woman was going to be rude, Zinnia would shower her in grace and the most profound of respects, although never in liking, never the true kind. Just decency. Nothing more and nothing else. “It’s just really nice out here in the sun, General, wouldn’t you agree?”

Olivier almost snorted out loud because it indeed was, but also because she saw through Zinnia’s attempt at courtesy. _So, kitty likes to scratch…_

“And from the looks of it,” Zinnia continued, slowly, trying to savor the fact that she was almost pulling this off. Her knees were beginning to shake a little for reasons unknown, but as long as Olivier kept her distrustful, almost believing eyes on her own and not on her legs, she’d be fine. Or not, maybe she preferred having Olivier stare at her knees, eye contact was… too much sometimes, “we’re both on break.”

“Get back to work,” Olivier ordered. And then her brain gave the rest of her an order to leave, as it would be customary after saying something like that, but her body didn’t follow. She watched as her hand, acting of its own accord, leapt forward and buried itself in the girl’s notebook only to pull the torn-off page and fold it, hidden. “And I’ll take _this_ with me.”

“Have a good day!” Zinnia managed, past her own bewilderment. She’d… just grabbed it. As if it was for her, which it was, but Olivier had no way to know _that_ beforehand. She could’ve just stolen a perfectly bad piece of writing, of even smut, and she’d just not given half a fuck and just…

_Who the fuck does she think she is??,_ Zinnia thought. Was this going to be like this every day? Was Olivier going to come back here every day to yell at her and demand she gave her whatever she’d meant to sell or just gift for free? Thank god Zinnia had prepared an actual bit of text for her today, just to see if she took the bait (which she had, albeit in unforeseen ways), because she would’ve probably fallen on her face right in front of the general if it hadn’t been for that. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t about to anyway.

She watched as Olivier left royally, head held high. She definitely had to own at least a few shops in here, that couldn’t be normal. That air of wealth and temperance was much too extraordinary, even ardent for a place like this, for people like these. Anybody just… was a mere shadow compared to her. It was a strange, strange phenomenon how a sole woman could occupy so much mental space and in such a distinct way.

But as she walked away, Olivier’s breathing was definitely not near normal rates, despite her perfect control of the outer image she gave. Learning to hold herself in public had been a lesson she’d always be grateful to her rigid upbringing for. Right now, it helped to try and hide the fact that her cheeks, normally cool and soft and paler than snow, were flaming with something she couldn’t quite name. Her cheeks _never_ burned. Whatever emotion she could bear within she’d always kept perfectly contained, exceptions noted. This, though… This had to be a mistake, caused by something she hadn’t been aware of. It must have been the little while she’d spent in the sun, she must’ve gotten sunburned, yes. That would explain it. It made for a wonderful explanation anybody would believe.

There’d been no such sun in the north since she’d come fifteen years ago, but _of course_ it’d been the sun.

Yet even if she’d found a half-decent way to excuse her flushing cheeks, would she ever find a reason for her churning stomach? For her trembling limbs? For having just… snatched a piece of paper that probably had nothing on it?

Deep down, even in the darkest corners of her own white lie, Olivier’s mind only had one thought to dwell on: _Little flowery fucker just ruined my dessert, didn’t she?_

Was it progress if she admitted it? Or was it denial if she kept deliberately ignoring why?

Olivier smoothed out the small piece of paper, guiding her horse back to Briggs with her other hand, and read the words written on it that could’ve been addressed to anyone but in the end were hers and hers alone to read.

* * *

 

_She looks down at you from a height that even the Olympians_

_would have fought wars to acquire, but her eyes_

_—roughened by the constant tide against granite stone—_

_don’t aim to demean, just unnerve._

_And the gentleness they hide,_

_that’s the real treasure one finds if one looks up at her and smiles._

* * *

 

_Fuck,_ Olivier thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaa this has so little dialogue, but since it was mainly just thoughts & repressed emotions and the like I didn't feel like adding any more banter (yet). I'll try and fix that in future chapters, though


	5. Tale as old as time

The phone rang when Zinnia was still sleeping. She literally leapt out of bed, pushing the covers as far away as she could, and ran to pick it up; she didn’t know for how long it’d been ringing.

Breathless, she answered.

“Everything okay, northerner?” Anthony’s voice said, teasing her as always.

“What did you just—? You call me to _call_ me a northerner?”

“I have a few minutes off of work. What’s up? How’re you doing?”

“Your work hours are … messy.” She would have to get ready to leave soon enough too. Candie wasn’t too rigid with the schedule as long as she had company and conversation, but Zinnia liked to be on time. It felt more like a job that way.

“Life’s messy.”

“ _I_ was gonna get going too, but I guess I can scrape off a second of my _extremely_ busy day to talk.” She said it with little to no sarcasm, but Anthony saw right through her and starting laughing.

“Pfffffff so you’re doing nothing, then?”

“I’m doing nothing,” Zinnia confirmed emphatically, defeated in her purpose to hide it. She might as well just go ahead and take pride in it. “Selling old books.”

“That’s the dream,” he teased in low voice. She could practically hear him laughing his head off, no matter how hard he tried not do it out loud.

“One word to my parents about this, Anthony, and I swear I’ll come down and – and – and…”

He actually snorted at this, finally given up on hiding his amusement.

“Short of ideas, are we?”

“Just give me time,” she joked. Then her voice got slightly softer, slightly enough so she could conceal how much she actually cared. “How are they doing, though? It’s been a while.”

“Just call them sometime. Your dad’s always at home.”

“He’s no longer spending time at the butchery?” she asked softly, confused. When she’d still been living down there, her father hadn’t left the shop much, he liked the gossip all those people coming in brought.

“Yeah, I mean, occasionally, I guess.” Anthony paused, almost as if he’d been made aware he’d slipped up. He quickly recovered, though. “Still, Zin, drop a line sometimes, come on.”

“I wouldn’t really know what to say.”

“Say what you say to me, for instance.” Anthony snorted. “Well, maybe not _literally._ ”

They both instantly recalled a few instances with Zinnia swearing like a sailor at Anthony for various reasons, and Anthony losing his shit because he always said she looked—and sounded—like the opposite of a person who swears _that_ much. She’d called him a long list of insulting things in jest and he’d shut up, but she could tell he’d been holding back a few guffaws that one time. Well, _every_ time, really.

“ _Definitely_ not literally,” she laughed.

She could hear him breathe slowly, after, trying to decide what to say next and how in reference to what was being discussed beyond jokes and silliness. God, Anthony was so careful with his words, the little idiot.

“They’re not angry at you. Nobody’s angry at you,” he offered in the end. “You told me to remind you next time, so I _am_. Things are just as they were when you left.”

“I haven’t _left._ I’m just… away,” Zinnia muttered to the phone. Away because ‘home’ had compressed her to a portion of who she really was (whoever she ended up being), because she only had Anthony back there and a family that wanted her to follow their path, to belong in their tiny perfectly modeled lives. Zinnia’d just wanted to explore, to see every inch of green in Central and then move on to other places. She’d wanted to exhaust all the beauty in the world, thinking that this way she’d eventually find a beauty worth staying somewhere for. That she’d find something she wouldn’t desperately ache to leave one morning.

“Regretting the whole north thing already?” he asked softly.

“It’s too soon to actually regret anything.” She passed a hand over the back of her neck, trying to alleviate the sudden tension in her muscles.

Because her words were lies, she actually _had_ reasons to regret this. Or the closest thing to one. A _mountain_ of a reason _._ Thank god Zinnia had more guts than she’d anticipated, and genetically inherited stubbornness, or else it would’ve made her quit Iver completely.

_This_ was her chance, this was her chance to tell her moral compass about it, or at least just get it off her chest. She didn’t even have to speak directly of anybody, she could just pretend it was a general feeling of discomfort, the taste of the food or just plain old nostalgia for simpler times.

But she was soft, and weak. And it would be one hell of a job to try and be anything else.

“Anthony, I… there’s actually a few things going on I desperately need you to laugh at me about.”

“Ah, yeah, sure…” he drifted off. “Just…”

She instantly felt he wasn’t listening. _Such bad timing…_

There was some noise on his end, probably someone calling him back to work. Slacking off to speak on the phone wasn’t what he was getting paid for, but there was no telling Anthony what to do.

“Sorry, Zin, break’s over.” He sounded truly distraught to have to cut her off at such a moment, so she let him go. “Catch you later. Bye.”

“Yeah, bye.”

_Third time’s the charm?_ Zinnia thought as she hung up, sighing.

Deep down she knew there probably wouldn’t be a third time trying to tell him about something so… irrelevant. Everybody had people in their lives, no matter how uncomplicated these lives were, that made them uncomfortable in any way.

Olivier Armstrong wasn’t her enemy, that was clear, or Zinnia’d already be running south with her tail between her legs—but she did inspire very troublesome feelings in Zinnia. And for good reason.

She posed a threat. The threat of a threat, really. A reminder than Zinnia was already on thin ice, in many different ways, and that if she slipped and cracked its surface, she’d be ruining everything.

It was simply _so_ much easier to just leap away from the ice, onto the safety and cushioned comfort that snow provided. It was so, so much easier to just… run away. 

* * *

 

Things didn’t change much in the next few days, as expected. When Anthony called again, eager to hear what Zinnia’d wanted to tell him, she backed out and just ranted about Iver. The smallest village in the world, known for a dessert few people liked, and hidden in miles and miles of plants and mountains. It was like living inside a marble. You could see the outside world while being trapped in it, and yet… it just remained a beautiful prison.

The sun, the smell of the flowers, her chair in the main street near the square, her many portraits about people whose names she had trouble remembering, Candie and her stories while they patiently awaited customers.

Was a comforting prison any less of a prison, though? Well, no, of course not. And all Zinnia needed to be positive about that was being dutifully reminded of _who_ was in charge of running her prison.

“Am I going to keep finding you here every day without fault?” Olivier sounded annoyed today, but barely interested in hiding it, when she marched past Zinnia’s spot like she was forcing herself to care.

“Depends.” That’d been so _un_ witty of Zinnia to say. “Will you keep coming every day?”

Olivier’s eyes scrutinized her sitting figure, legs crossed in the shade of the late afternoon and still bare. Did this woman really not know of the existence of pants?

“You’re on my way,” she simply commented in the end.

“I’ll just move aside, then,” Zinnia said chirpily, dragging her chair across the cobblestone to the sunny patch that filtered from the minor street behind her, but deep inside she wanted to confront this lady as loudly as loud went.

It was things like those that ticked her off. There was a very distinct energy coming from the general, not exactly hatred, but still powerful enough to scare Zinnia a little into… submission? Quiet defiance?

Olivier came and went, but always did so on her own terms and holding her shoulders back, almost marking everything around Zinnia as her territory when there was no need because Zinnia was quite literally doing nothing that could count as a threat.

Was doing nothing a punishable offense in this little prison of a town?

Sometimes, though—and as spring advanced, ‘sometimes’ became a far more common occurrence—, Zinnia would simply gift Olivier with a meek ‘good afternoon’, just to get a reaction, no matter how small. This reaction tended to consist of a grunt and then Olivier blatantly ignoring the interaction, but it meant that Zinnia held at least one tenth of the power: and that was her capacity to rise over personal affronts against herself.

But Olivier could see it in her eyes, the ‘I am better than you’ power stance. And she smirked to herself when she was about to pass Zinnia, because she knew just how to snap it into a thousand pieces. 

* * *

 

“General, you’re needed downstairs.” Miles came to see her one morning, catching her while she pushed all her paperwork aside to leave. For a moment, he didn’t know whether to come in or just leave her be, but then he gulped and added: “It’s about the tank, sir.”

“You’re not my secretary,” she said. “Have them send someone else next time and get back to work. I need you organizing this week’s out-of-bounds patrols.”

Awaiting his reply, which didn’t come, she stood up. She was going to, anyway. Albeit for different reasons.

“Shall I walk with you, General?”

“You may,” she conceded with a nod.

When they got to the elevator, she finally spoke again:

“I haven’t received notice of any of our mountain patrols yet.”

“As far as I know, there hasn’t been any news since the last time,” Miles said, confirming her suspicions.

The inspections on foreign land were usually quiet incursions that took weeks to complete because of the stealth involved. Olivier had once taken the next step from silent observation to full-on spying missions, but Drachma had responded with grenades. Her men had come back with day-old wounds, and Captain Buccaneer had lost an arm and had been on the brink of losing his life.

Ever since, Briggs sent patrols to the snowy mountains, no matter the season, to watch the border where the eyes of Briggs could not reach. A messenger would come down to the fort from time to time to give a status report, but lately there’d only been one, meant for the last mountain men brigade to pass on the torch to another.

There hadn’t been any new information since, either.

“Everything’s quiet,” Olivier muttered. “Too damn quiet.”

“It won’t be for long,” Miles said. And she nodded.

War was brewing. If Drachma brought it down on their heads, they had to be ready. That’s what Olivier told herself as they reached the Engineering Department, that all of this was in the name of upholding Briggs’ reputation.

Survival.

That’s what had inspired all this engineering, all the defense operations and the negotiations, failures as they were. Olivier hadn’t expected them to hold for as long as they had, but if anything good had come out of that was the absolute diligence on everybody under her command. If Drachma came—later than sooner, she thought—, at least they would be able to put up a decent fight other than just outlasting them in a siege.

“I hope whatever you’re whispering about is important enough to make me personally oversee this,” she addressed the engineers directly when she was presented with the plans for a war tank.

They gulped in her presence, unsure about how to word the reason for having her come down.

“It’s just a prototype, it works but…” Both men looked at each other, obviously wary of her to some extent. If she was a force of nature on a good day, today she could easily tear them apart with half a glare.

“But?” Olivier pressed it, arching an eyebrow.

“There’s much to be improved,” one of them said. “Firing range, mostly. Speed. Maneuver control. But otherwise it’s bulky enough.”

“This is meant to guarantee victory from a distance _and_ deliver a flawless attack, not merely scare them with the sight. They _know_ what a tank is.”

Probably the task of building a super machine on the clock wasn’t the most compassionate thing to impose on these men, but Olivier recognized the strength required in this situation in the eyes of her soldiers.

“Ensure those faults are made insignificant in further modifications,” she concluded in the end. “And abstain from sending for me to inspect any more prototypes unless they are fully developed and _functional_.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t burn anything in the process, as always,” she said before she turned around and left, hair waving behind her. Miles followed quickly, he had a few concerns he wanted to share with the general, and he’d already finished most of the day’s work calculating schedules for patrols and watch duty inside the fort, even if she would certainly insist on him finishing up more than just ‘most’.

“Will tanks truly be effective?” he asked as they walked to Olivier’s office. Even at its inception, the tank project hadn’t resonated much with Major Miles. She understood so, he came from times of relative peace with the north, and his only acquaintance with the war had been the illegitimate discrimination he’d always suffer for being part of the race Central had meant to eradicate in Ishval.

“Against a full-blown offensive?” she replied. “No doubt.”

“I don’t think that’s up Drachma’s alley right now. They are playing the same game we are.”

She thought long and hard about it before replying.

“You’re probably right, Major. But if they’ve got tanks, ours will be better.” She smirked. “Having the upper hand is our specialty.”

“The Mountain Men haven’t returned yet.” He reminded her again that they _had_ no upper hand without information. And all they saw from Briggs was the border, clear and bare like that flower girl’s legs in the sun.

“I am aware.”

“That’s not good news, is it? It’s spring. In winter, it made more sense for them to take their time, but now?” he said. “My question is, is their silence owed solely to lack of any new data to share?”

She glared at him, but she had to admit there was some truth to his words. She wondered how long he’d been meaning to say this to her.

“Do you know of a better approach to this, Miles? Because if you do I will be _thrilled_ to hear your proposal.” Olivier had to remind herself that she _valued_ his take on things so as to not be too biting with him just because she didn’t want to have this conversation right now, when she’d been meaning to leave for Iver for at least half an hour. But this was her job, and to hell with rich desserts and annoying girls until this was done.

“I just thought that perhaps a less… direct means of attack and defense would be beneficial for the fort.”

“You and half of us…” She sighed. “If you come up with anything more concrete than that, put it forward. Meanwhile I’ll have to find a way to make up for our… bluntness in combat.”

“Sorry if I have offended you,” he muttered, realizing how she might’ve interpreted his previous statement.

She ignored him, rolling her eyes. “Find the Captain and come see me, I’d like to discuss this with you both.”

A few minutes later, the three of them were gathered in Olivier’s office. The leader and her subordinates, awaiting news or orders, or perhaps both.

She looked at them. At the big bulky captain whose wrinkled and weather-beaten face was always lit up by his ridiculous and loud jokes. At the soldier who she had saved, but who really had saved Briggs when he’d chosen to stand by her. They both had. Her two indisputable second-in-command, if not in practice, at least in confidential moments like this.

Then, she exposed the problem Miles had spotted in their _modus operandi_ , adding to it that they would need, from now on, to find the way to juggle both the tank operation and something else that had not taken a definite shape in Olivier’s mind yet. Something that would grant Briggs a reputation for stealth as well as for their resilience.

Buccaneer, of course, suggested at once that they upgrade their automail situation, wiggling his right arm at them so they’d know what he was talking about.

“A legion of superhumans against those bastards would be lethal, General,” he said.

“As long as you weren’t their commander, Buccaneer,” Miles said, laughing. “That’d be a quick defeat.”

“We don’t have the budget,” Olivier objected, frowning at the two of them and their out-of-place camaraderie in these moments. “Nor are we going to maim half our population for mechanical superiority. That’s what the _tank_ will be for.”

“I’m just saying… we’d have the element of surprise, if it ever comes to that. This cat-and-mouse game is getting old, General, and you know the Drachman…” Buccaneer said with a big toothy smile on his face. “It’d scare them back to their country, seeing big old men like me with a chainsaw for an arm.”

Olivier snorted at the image. “I don’t think so, no. We’re looking for subtlety, effectiveness, something we can use from a distance, not just a display of power.” _We already have that now_.

Resting her chin on her hand, she thought about every major war she knew of. For years, the intermittent conflict with Drachma had entailed, mostly, carnage on both sides and no resolution in sight. Drachma tried to gain territory, Amestris fought them off, then the situation was reversed in some way or another. And now it was a tug of war where no side was tugging _harder_ , although both sides’ hands were firmly wrapped around the cord, waiting each other out.

Then she remembered Ishval, a permanent hole through Amestris’ membrane and one of the military’s worst mistakes. Perhaps she could allow herself to think this way because she’d had no say it in, not having been involved when it all had come to an end in the final and bloodiest year of the war. She’d been too far north, busy protecting the same old border where she was stuck now. But Olivier had known people who’d fought, not that many years ago... A legion of alchemists, soldiers…

If she took the murderous approach of alchemy being used against civilians, turned it around and used it to improve the quality of the work being done here at Briggs against their neighborly enemy…

That, she could work with. If her infamous soldiers could learn, then perhaps…

“More snipers?” Buccaneer asked, still thinking about her previous words.

Olivier shook her head.

“Something we’ll be in history books for.” She made a pause; she’d had an idea. “Gentlemen, are you familiar with the Presidential Order 3066?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, i had so much fun writing this chapter... I've so many ideas for the whole story I can't possibly fit them all into the general plot but so far it's been an amazing experience to try and decide what's going to happen next (not to mention how much reading I've been doing on FMA trivia ^^)


	6. Like the river flows

Fort Briggs could’ve well been considered a patchwork of many crafts. Housing several departments, all of them as various as variety went, it had been built pragmatically, to accommodate all its numbers comfortably within reason. Communal dorms and baths were the norm around the fortress, as well as tiny common rooms for the occasional break in the soldiers’ shifts. Only the senior positions were offered small individual living quarters. But Briggs also counted with a few amenities that weren’t 100% so. Among one of those rooms that didn’t fit into the ‘do first, think later’ way of things was the library.

And it was a well-provided library, at that. Olivier had used to visit it much more often than she did now, when her daily battles had consisted of surviving instead of ensuring other people did. It’d provided a good refuge, and eventually a ladder. Yet with her ascension to power and control, coming here had stopped being so necessary, and she only ever turned to books when she had the time or was at a complete loss otherwise. Even if she knew most of the volumes on those dusty shelves, she could always come across something new that would broaden her perspective.

Nobody was posted there. Whoever wanted to consult a book or just read something quietly knew they could come and spend some time in silence. And then, once in a blue moon, the cleaning shift would dust a little so the room wouldn’t smell like it’d been left to its own devices two centuries ago.

Olivier pushed the door open and she did get that same feeling, nonetheless. Like she’d been jerked back in time, just not centuries. Perhaps that was a lucky thing, she knew at least where to look and where to start.

This room was where she’d learned about advanced strategy before life had taught it to her, where she’d trained her mind to see better and to see further. Back in the olden days, Olivier hadn’t taken much interest in alchemy, mostly owed to her brother certainly _being_ interested himself. But she’d read through some basic manuals just in case it ever came in handy.

“Well, I guess it does now,” she muttered to herself as she reached out to the last shelf to her left, without need for standing on her toes, and dug out the book she’d been looking for.

_Basic Alchemic Concepts – Volume I._ There should be a collection of those volumes somewhere, but she didn’t remember seeing them here. She’d have to ask the local places, probably even send someone down to North City.

Olivier took the book to the only table in the room and, supporting her face with her hand, she began to turn the pages, skimming them for key words.

Alex had always liked this. Alex had _loved_ it, he hadn’t seen unfathomable mysteries in them, he’d pushed through until he’d made sense of everything. _A soldier and an alchemist_ , Olivier thought now. Quite the dangerous mix.

She, on the other hand, had never understood much of it. Flows of energy didn’t matter, things were what they were to her, they didn’t have the potential to be changed. Alchemy was as good as a dark kind of magic she had no need for, no use for.

“Funny how things turn out…”

Equivalent exchange laws, the circles of transmutation, the origin of alchemy in Amestris…

_…as of today, alchemy as a science is understood to have been born in the seventeenth century. Amestris’ neighboring countries each have differing views on what it is, as well as utilizing other methods that may stem from the same roots as alchemy. Xingese tradition, for instance, relies on alkahestry, a variant of alchemy that focuses on the flow of life and its various medical applications…_

“Alkahestry, huh?” Olivier said out loud, the word tasting familiar in her mouth.

Briggs might not have had a casualty in over fifteen years, but they sure had had wounded in greater numbers than she liked to admit. Buccaneer had lost an entire arm, boosting the developmental trials of automail. But there’d been others, regardless of carefulness and skill, that had suffered similar fates.

Accidents happened, as much as she wanted to avoid them. People slipped on ice, burned their hands while cooking, and go hurt while in the mountain range trying to outsmart Drachma. At least the war was on pause now, but for however long that would last was a mystery. Better to be prepared than to mourn new losses or make fatal mistakes.

Alchemy read as a complicated thing to invest on, and costly and time-consuming as well. Teaching a bunch of privates how to operate something that didn’t have a solid shape to hang on to would take too much time. But if alkahestry’s main focus was on healing, _that_ she could work with.

An untouchable army that moved forward no matter what, resurfacing from the snow like daisies. Even Drachma would hesitate at the sight.

Olivier read on for several more minutes, going back to the index to see if there was anything more on this alkahestry concept other than those few lines, but all the chapters strictly versed, as hinted by the title, on the basics of alchemy. She’d have to find some more books, then.

_Or…_ the thought came without her being able to stop it. _Send for Ianthe._

Ianthe sure would love that, getting her first letter after fifteen years. Olivier wondered if she’d even expect an apology or would simply tear the letter into pieces without caring what was inside. It’d been a long time, perhaps she’d deign to read it. Perhaps she’d find it in herself, past the raging hatred and the pain, to answer Olivier’s call for help.

_“What is even the flow of things?” Olivier had asked, lying on her back on Ianthe’s house’s small garden under the tender shade of the magnolia tree._

_Ianthe had laughed. “It’s not something concrete.”_

_“If it’s not concrete, how can you know it’s there?”_

_Then Ianthe had rolled on her side, leaning on her elbow, and had gazed at her in a way she’d never look at another living creature. Olivier had gone limp where she was. The presence those eyes had…_

_“Have you ever been in love?” Ianthe had asked then, softly, curiously, rather than just seeking an answer to continue explaining._

_“Is that a trick question?”_

_“Have you?” Ianthe chuckled, ignoring her hesitance._

_Olivier’s eyes hadn’t left hers for as long as it took her to say—to confess: “I have.”_

_And Ianthe’s smile had grown sly._

_“How can you know that you have if it’s not something concrete, something you can, say, hold in your hand?”_

_Olivier had cracked a smile, admitting defeat. Her fingers had found Ianthe’s._

_“Oh, but I_ can _hold it in my hand…”_

* * *

 

Zinnia popped up from under a puff of dust, hair falling on her face. She looked just like a woman that had been saving texts from dust-driven extinction for a couple of hours.

“Where are the cooking books?” she said.

“We have cooking books?” Candie asked. She kept going in the back and resurfacing with a few dozen volumes in her hand, leaving them either on the counter or on the floor near the shelves Zinnia was taking care of.

“I remember seeing something like that around a while ago.”

“I still don’t understand why tidying the place up will help.”

Zinnia rolled her eyes.

“Efficiency,” she said. “In the future we’ll find books faster this way.”

“But I’ve always done it this way.”

_The chaotic way?_ she thought. But she couldn’t really say that out loud. Some people did a pretty good job at living messily, thinking that just because they thought they knew where things are nothing would go unnoticed right under their noses. Like the _cooking books_. Those were just playing with the two of them, at this point, no matter how intense Zinnia got at organizing this place.

She exhaled dramatically. “Well, now _I’m_ here. Things have, in a way, changed already, haven’t they? They can keep changing.”

“You’re a smart little flower, aren’t you?” Candie pinched her cheeks like Zinnia’s grandmother had used to and went back to the few boxes of books that covered most of the floor, trapping them between the shelves and the opening to the shop itself.

“Not a flower,” Zinnia said, pouting.

Candie still didn’t lose the smile. In fact, she began laughing loudly.

“A smart little helper, then.”

Zinnia blushed a little, catching the hint. “I just can’t find anything if it’s all so _not_ organized.”

They both stared at each other for a second. Zinnia had the feeling there was a little bit of friendly sass coming her way, Candie sure liked her humor. But in the end the older woman just shook her head as if she was disposing of a particular thought and just said:

“Cooking books, right?”

Zinnia nodded enthusiastically. “Cooking books.”

“Somebody really came to my bookshop and _asked_ for cooking books?”

Zinnia laughed (because it _was_ funny) and shrugged (because it really wasn’t any of her business). It was something worthy of having a national holiday, truth be told. _An inhabitant of the north wants to learn how to cook!_ “One should never lose faith?”

“Mark my words,” Candie said. “The only two good edible things this land will ever produce is: 1) cream for the desserts, and 2) beef.”

Zinnia raised her eyebrows, eyes open wide. “I’ve never tried the beef.”

“Don’t,” Candie said solemnly, going back to what she was doing. “There’s a reason we’re better known for the desserts.”

Zinnia shook her head, laughing softly, and stood on her tiptoes to look in the higher shelves. She could hear Candie rummaging with cages of old books in the back, behind the translucent blue curtain that was never fully closed.

All she’d found so far had nothing to do with cooking, or food for that matter. Although she had seen a particularly entertaining book about hunting. She was positive by now these people ate bear meat.

She was intent on finding the books, though. Having an obstacle in the way didn’t deter her much, it posed a challenge. One of the good ones, without any risk-taking and no danger. Just her mind and a room with hundreds of titles to read through before she found the one.

Candie walked across the room carrying one of the heavy-looking box. Zinnia quickly went to help. She got the box from her boss’s hands before she could complain.

“Here, I’ll take care of this. You keep looking meanwhile.”

“Sure thing,” Candie said, beaming.

Zinnia held the box in her arms for a total of half a minute before she started questioning her decision to stop working out. Arms that once had been suppler were now soft and not exactly fit for weight-lifting. She just carefully dropped the box on the floor and immediately knelt by it, grabbing each book to take a quick look at the cover and then putting them in the lower shelves. First, they’d find a place for each volume, and then they’d start figuring out how to rearrange them.

When the box was half empty, she had to peep inside to grab the next book, then stretch out long as she was to fit them properly in the almost-crowded shelf to her right. She could feel her skirt rising up a little more than she was comfortable, but they had no customers so far and if someone walked in, she’d hear them in time to fix herself up a little.

She didn’t, of course, _hear_ in time.

“Good morning,” a familiar voice said, with none of the usual icy nuances to it. _Olivier’s_ voice.

Zinnia’s first reaction was to, quickly as she could, tug down at her skirt, but when she tried to turn around to see who it was, she practically threw herself to the floor, thighs suddenly hitting the moldy wood, legs apart because she’d had no time to close them.

“Morning!” she said in an usually high-pitched voice, getting on her feet at the speed of light to go the counter, a foot or two away, and slamming her hands down on it (harder than she meant to) as if that would make the other woman forget what she’d just seen.

_How unprofessional,_ Olivier thought. And how ridiculous, too. How could someone be in such a situation while the business’ door was wide open, inviting customers in to… see this level of utmost indecency?

“Oh,” she said instead, frowning. “It’s you.”

“It is indeed,” Zinnia said, trying to regulate her breathing. She was still feeling like she was being taken by surprise over and over again as seconds passed, like Olivier’s eyes were still on places no eyes should be unless Zinnia gave her permission. “I told you I had a job.”

Olivier would’ve asked her, sarcastically, if this was her concept of a job, but she bit her tongue. She had actual business to conduct right now, she couldn’t get distracted by an annoying street flower.

Zinnia tapped her fingers on the counter. “Can I help you with anything?”

Olivier seemed to be pondering whether it would be more or less cost-effective to leave now or stay with her brain in alarm mode.

“I’ll come back another day,” she said in the end.

She was about to turn around and leave when Zinnia intervened, cursing herself right after, as it was customary. But she felt braver in here, sheltered by books and walls. This was her place, after all.

“Well, I’m here _every day_ , you know? You might as well just get it over with.”

Olivier hmphed.

“Very telling, how you think there’s anything to get over.”

“I have nothing to give you today,” Zinnia said all of a sudden, remembering. She always wrote after work, sometimes during, but today she’d been busy as hell. “For your trouble.”

Olivier blinked slowly, not following.

“For, you know,” Zinnia explained, “making the effort to ride down every day just to collect your evidence that I’m not selling illegally.”

Olivier almost smiled. As if she came down to Iver for those stupid portraits. No, it would never be that. She couldn’t care any less, even if the goddamn things were piling up in one of her drawers where she kept them. She came here because the proximity allowed her to take more breaks and to eat something sweet while she walked around; because it had quite enchanting views of the mountains, some of them brown and green, some still white at the top; and because the ride down here helped her think. Nothing more.

“I would’ve expected you to give up much sooner,” she said calmly, hoping to embarrass Zinnia enough to shut her up. She hadn’t rebuked the ‘you come to Iver every day to fight me’ part, though.

But, against all odds, Zinnia’s eyes were perfectly serene as well. She did not move an inch, or wrinkle her face in a grimace at the general’s words.

“I haven’t given up.”

Even her words sounded peaceful, conceding in a way. Confessing to Olivier without voicing it that she didn’t plan on ever giving up, for whatever reason. And it wasn’t just to keep this going or to prove she had as much right to write stories in the sun as anybody. There was something else there, something far more profound and incomprehensible by either Zinnia herself or Olivier.

Why did Zinnia keep on writing those honest paragraphs—so brutally honest sometimes Olivier wanted to just crumble them all up and set fire to them all? Did _she_ want the general to see her there every day, defying her orders, challenging her to come closer?

Why did Olivier keep on coming here to receive them as well, to take them in her hand and not look at them until she was a mile away, almost getting to her fort? Did _she_ want to see the flower girl directly disobeying her orders, challenging her to step up and try and win her game… and succeeding in doing so?

Right when the both of them were finally, slowly—meltingly slowly—, arriving to the right conclusions, Candie came in from the back like she wasn’t interrupting anything. And, to be fair, nothing in that small room would have ever given her the impression that she was.

“No luck yet!” she told Zinnia, then she let her mouth open wide when she noticed Olivier there. Her face was proof enough that nobody was ever truly used to seeing her among them. When a queen left her throne behind, her subjects tended to stare. “General Armstrong, good morning. How can we be of assistance?”

“Your…” Olivier gave Zinnia a cold look, getting ready to choose the most inappropriate word she could, out of spite for making her question things that didn’t need questioning, “ _apprentice_ was about to get to that, I believe.”

“Zinnia, dear, have you been acquainted? This is—”

_Ah, so that’s her name,_ Olivier thought, smirking to herself. A flower name for a flower girl. So very _fitting._

“We’ve met, yes,” Zinnia said with a fake smile.

Candie looked at Zinnia, then at Olivier, then she grinned widely. Her ears would’ve pointed towards the sky if they’d been able to.

“I’ll leave you with her, General.” And with a sly smile, Candie go back to where she’d come from. “I need to get back to finding those wretched cooking books…” She disappeared behind the blue curtain.

There was no further sound to be heard for a couple of long seconds, until Zinnia sighed.

“So,” she said. “What do you need from me?”

For a second, neither knew if Zinnia was asking about the undeniable tension between them or just about Olivier’s purpose in Candie’s bookshop.

“I’m looking for anything you might have on alkahestry.”

Zinnia made a confused face. She’d never heard the term. She probably wouldn’t even know how to spell it. Too many schwas.

“Sorry, I’m not familiar.”

Olivier explained, looking bored and increasingly impatient, covering the basics and, to Zinnia’s joy, the spelling as well. It was only relevant, after all. How else would anybody find a book title with it on the cover?

“If I remember correctly, there’s a few reports on alchemy in general somewhere,” Zinnia was saying, taking a peep into the first shelves near the counter. The ‘I fell on my ass near this shelf but it’s okay, nobody will remember’. “We were in the middle of… renovating. Just give me a second.”

Olivier scoffed. “Please,” she said, “take all the time you need.”

Zinnia got in the back, pushing the blue curtain back and not smoothing it after, and Olivier saw the chaos of books everywhere. Double-rowed on the shelves, strewn over the floor, in boxes.

Thank god this was a small bookshop, or else the mess would have taken days to get slightly organized.

Zinnia went straight to the shelves on the left, brow furrowed and biting her lip subconsciously. She read the titles at the top, then moved on quickly to the middle shelves, then her frown intensified, and she supported herself on the shelf with her palm, leaning forward to take a look at the lower shelves.

She had nice legs for a limp city girl, Olivier found herself thinking. Brown skin that shone slightly in the sun, that hint of muscle that used to be there and now was just a faint memory the girl could probably revive in a few days. When she crouched, finally, her knees complained, snapping the moment in two like a bone.

Olivier almost laughed out loud at herself. This _was,_ without a doubt, ridiculous and absurd and she would not speak a word of it to anyone. She’d been here too long, she should’ve left at the first chance she’d had. But to hell with letting this flower girl get away with having the last word.

And the flower girl stood up in one smooth motion and proceeded to review every last shelf to later return to the counter, empty-handed.

“Nothing in sight, sorry,” she said. “I’ll give it a thorough look later, when we’re done here. What was the name of the thing again?”

“Alkahestry.”

Zinnia wrote it down where she usually took note of the orders.

“If I don’t find anything, I’ll ask Candie if we could call North City and have them send us a book or two.”

Olivier pursed her lips.

“And how long will that take?”

“A few days. I don’t know. I’ll try and keep you informed.”

Olivier looked at her for a few seconds, wondering how that process of sharing information would go down. Zinnia held her gaze, somehow getting better at this by practicing so much in the past few minutes.

In the end, Olivier just nodded.

“I guess I’ll find you where I always do, then,” she said softly.

Zinnia nodded back at her, “Yes, ma’am.”

_Ma’am…_ _The sheer audacity_. No one had called her ma’am since she’d been underage, but that was water under the bridge now, so Olivier growled to herself but said nothing to the flower girl.

She just walked away… and bid her time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hjdkdfhrjd I was supposed to have uploaded this yesterday but... I'm stuck on Chapter 14 (writer's block yay), and I feel like maybe I should rewrite everything before that to make it all fit better into the general plot, but I don't know. Maybe I'll do that when the whole's fic done and keep posting weekly for now


	7. An armistice of written words

When writing grew stale, Zinnia fought it, but not for long. She just left it all under the spring sun, so it would charge itself back, so it would decide it was too hot to remain there and it’d try and find her again.

A writer without words… That felt like the world’s most ironic of realities. How could she run out? She lived surrounded by them, made sure to drown herself in more after work, and wrote them by the hundreds in her free time, whether it was by the corner that was already hers through stubbornness or at home. _How_ could they abandon her like that with no warning?

One day she’d just knocked on their door and nobody had come open it for her to invite her in. Was Zinnia not allowed in anymore?

“Try something else,” Anthony told her. Anthony was not a writer. He worked around electricity, the energy that moved him was different. He liked challenges that someone else could help him with if he failed to solve them. He didn’t understand that something else wouldn’t fill the hole, or even begin to repair it.

“’Something else’ as in draping my neck over the edge of my bed and think of stuff or something else as in—?”

“’Something else’ as in, I don’t know, Zin.” She startled a little at the harshness of his tone. It was true sometimes she sought all the answers in him, assuming he had them when he probably didn’t even have his own to begin with. She felt kind of bad for always monopolizing everything with him. “Draw, buy ten pears and eat them, go see if the town’s butchery is any good. That kinda stuff.”

She understood. “Distraction.”

“Yeah, it’s either—” He seemed to be really thinking about this, too. Even when he was disinterested or tired of her same-old bullshit, he rummaged his brains for something to say. “—being demotivated yet determined to write even if it’s bad, or going out there and finding out your reason to keep going till it’s good.”

Zinnia almost laughed. “Is that what you do?” Did he turn the switches on and off when nothing seemed to work? Did their entire town lose electricity when he did?

“I do a lot of stuff. Unsure about which _stuff_ in particular you mean.”

“Distract yourself from something till you just… know how to get back to it?”

“I just do what I feel I should. Sometimes I fuck it up even more, but that’s _life_. Do the same. Fuck up. It’s good for one’s ego.” He said it exactly in the opposite spirit of ‘it’s good for one’s ego’. Fucking up was not nice, even if it helped get some perspective. People looked at you differently, their judgment clear in their eyes, and no amount of well-deserved redemption from your mistakes made them forget about it.

That’s why Zinnia stayed mostly quiet, unless pushed too far; aside to protect herself from foreign opinions; vigilant so she could avoid as many fuck-ups as she could.

“I don’t know how to do that.” She laughed at her own absurdity because she really didn’t know. She always tried to do the opposite of what he was saying. Her _entire_ stay in the north was rooted in _trying not to fuck up,_ in walking on eggshells so things that could go wrong only went wrong a little and not completely. Some eggshells had already cracked, though. “Fucking up is terrible, Anthony.”

“Is it?” Anthony said, clearly in disagreement. “You learn. We all need a good dose of that sometimes. God knows _I_ did…” he muttered.

“You _have_ learned,” she rebuked. _“_ So have I.”

“I miss you, though” And Zinnia knew that what he meant wasn’t ‘hey I haven’t seen you in a while’, it went deeper than that. He hadn’t used his funny voice.

He missed things she couldn’t give back to him. Things that had been, a long time ago, and that she knew had hurt him, and would continue to do so. Because some wounds didn’t heal all the way, there remained some pain in the new skin around it.

“Can’t unlearn that.”

“Don’t, then,” Zinnia said after a few seconds. “You don’t have to. You have me.”

He just sighed in the end, because he missed the old Zinnia, not the woman talking to him right now, and that younger version of her was never coming back. “Anyway, move your ass. Even if you’re not writing, do something. You’ll feel more productive.”

“I’ll do that if you tell me why you sound like someone poured salt into your glass of water,” she said. She was certain there was something bothering him. In other circumstances she might’ve not pressed it, but he was being too good helping her with her bullshit, she wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone either. “And don’t tell me it’s because you miss me.”

“…my love life’s as consistent as a fried egg,” he finally admitted in low voice.

“What happened?” she asked, biting her lip.

“There’s been this girl, lately. She said she doesn’t feel the same way.”

“I’m sorry, Anthony…”

“Don’t be. I just—I’m scared she won’t want to be friends. People don’t always want to be friends, after…”

Zinnia tried not to take that the wrong way. Sometimes he made small references to their failed story and then the slapdash friendship that’d been coined out of it. She’d gotten over it pretty fast, getting lost in another pair of beautiful eyes, but he hadn’t.

“If she doesn’t, well, that’s her choice to make,” she told him. _Just like it was mine to continue to be, with you._ “And you’ll make more friends.”

“She’s… not acting different. But she’s… I don’t know, distant?”

Zinnia thought about it. What would she do if she was trying to be friendly to someone who kept building walls between them? She didn’t really have to _imagine_ it, though, did she?

“Then relax, give it time. Give _yourself_ time. You’ll know if she’s not interested in keeping you around. But don’t just listen to paranoid Anthony, okay? Listen to normal Anthony as well. He knows stuff. His advice is always sound, huh? So follow it too.”

She bit her lip and held her breath. If he found out she was definitely not following her own advice and, on top of that, recycled it for his needs…

“I don’t wanna hurt her, Zin,” he muttered.

“Then be a friend to her and listen to her too.”

“I’m gonna fuck it up, aren’t I?”

She actually chuckled, louder than she’d meant to. But it was too good not to.

“Do you want me to spit your own line back at you?” she said. “Because I could.”

“No, I want you to get the hell out of your living room and do something different with your life,” Anthony replied at once. “And I’ll… try and not freak out too much. Whoever breaks form first loses.”

Zinnia did laugh now. He was _back._

“Good. And relax a little, okay?”

Even if she’d semi-promised she’d behave, Zinnia put off the going out and doing things part. It was Saturday, and she had no work. She could’ve gone to the bookshop anyway, Candie really didn’t mind it, and she’d probably get paid anyway. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to feel young for once, do something _young_ people did.

In Iver there was a tiny group of teenagers who sat cross-ledged near the main street and just about told funny stories and laughed loudly, like the teenagers they were.

But when she did her version of the same thing and sat down somewhere quiet, the authority came to get her, ogling her with angry eyes and making her feel like she had huge spot on her favorite dress.

The last good words she’d written, crumbled beyond redemption in one of her light jackets, were precisely for the person who had poured dark liquid to make that huge spot all the more visible.

_She comes to destroy. Every day, every afternoon. With her fearlessness and her authority, and her words. If she spoke, it was settled. You had no further say, even if you dared to speak up. Except… except sometimes she wavers. But it’s so subtle, sometimes I think I’m making it up._

Zinnia hadn’t allowed herself to hand that in with her usual smile. She’d written more words for Olivier Armstrong than she’d written for herself, now. And they were confident words, at that. They were defiant, nothing like her usual blabber. These paragraphs of hers, born in the north _for_ the north, gave off more confidence than anything she’d even written before.

She couldn’t always live by that poise, but her words could. And those were an immortal sample of the things she meant to be yet never got to.

The situation, of course, continued to be tense. Something in Zinnia stirred uncomfortably when she saw the tall woman appear in the sun, but she’d learned to swallow it, keep it hidden inside her. Perhaps that’s what kept the general coming here, the fact that she hadn’t managed to scare Zinnia off yet. Or maybe now she came because she simply needed something from here and it gave her pleasure to torture the new girl with her presence.

And Zinnia couldn’t afford to think it was her words that attracted the general, although she didn’t stop writing short paragraphs that didn’t really praise Olivier, just… ached to understand her.

Whenever Zinnia’s hands brushed hers to give her the piece of paper, the Northern Wall of Briggs left to never return until the next midafternoon. Zinnia’s words were a ceasefire. A temporary one.

And every time this encounter took place lately, there were words exchanged, but nothing like the first days of spring. This was business, polite and aloof, but civil. Olivier asked a few times, short and to the point, and every time Zinnia had to tell her there was nothing yet. North City was close enough that a book wouldn’t take too long to travel, but they’d still have to look for it.

One day, after Zinnia had willingly given Olivier one of the most ridiculously risky things she’d written—a sound analysis of her role in the military, as if Zinnia knew a lot about that other than what the men had taken to say—, when the question came Zinnia had a different answer.

“It came in this morning. I’d asked for more but it’s already remarkable that they found any.” Zinnia looked up at the general’s blue eyes. “Will it do?”

“It’ll be worth your trouble, yes,” she said at once, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Zinnia ogled, thinking that must be pretty uncomfortable, to be all constricted in a uniform and then constrict yourself even more by reducing space like that.

She quickly recovered, though, as if she’d never lain her eyes anywhere she shouldn’t.

“Oh it was no trouble, it’s my job. Do you want me to bring it to you tomorrow?”

Olivier thought about it for a second.

“Now would be more fitting,” she said. “I’ve waited long enough.”

Zinnia stood up at once, as if she’d been given an order, taking her straw hat and putting it on. The spring sun could still burn.

“Sure.” She began to lead the way into the narrow streets of Iver, although Olivier would have surely known how to get there on her own. It made sense to walk together, in any case. They _were,_ absurd as it felt, going to the same place.

The general’s stride covered vastly more inches than her own, it made her have to walk faster so they’d be even. Should she even walk at the same level as a general? Was there any sort of protocol she wasn’t following? If there was, Olivier didn’t once speak about it with her usual annoyance.

“I hope Candie’s still there, or you _will_ have to wait until tomorrow. I don’t have a key,” Zinnia said when they were nearing the bookshop.

Their footsteps merged into one against the pavement and eventually gravel. Once there, they got lucky. Candie was in, and busied herself with something at the counter, letting her associate take care of this. Zinnia almost smiled. Candie was probably a little too scared to meddle with Olivier Armstrong—who wasn’t?

At the back of the shop, Zinnia got the big dusty book from the shipping box it’d come in and offered it to the other woman, arms shaking slightly under its weight.

“There you go.” Nervously, Zinnia dared to look at her again. “Looks … dense.”

“It is.” Olivier wasn’t paying attention to her, though. Her eyes were on the cover, and the trembling fingers holding it for her to see. “Not that you would know why, would you?” She’d spoken so softly, Zinnia hesitated about whether it’d actually meant to be hurtful, more like… bitter. Because it was not like Olivier knew a lot about it either, she wouldn’t be interested in reading about it if she did.

“God no.” Zinnia decided not to act offended by that accusation. “That sort of thing is too out of my reach, I’m afraid. It’s all dense to me. I was just … making conversation.”

This time, when her eyes sought the general’s, they found them. _Like falling upwards onto the night sky…_ Their blue was warm and weirdly inviting, so contrary to the aura surrounding her. Nothing in the woman seemed so, she was fortified against invaders and passersby.

Olivier didn’t look away. In fact, she _stared_ far longer than she wanted to. Zinnia’s brown skin attracted her gaze; she irradiated a kind of energy that wasn’t typical of these lands. She … irradiated kindness, even if it was misplaced.

But Zinnia didn’t feel especially kind right now, she actually wondered if this was an invasion or sorts, if letting her eyes dart further down at the covered pale neck of the woman in front of her counted as an act of war. How many soldiers were dying in the trenches just because she’d decided she wanted to conquer _this_?

 “Ask North City for more books,” Olivier barked all of a sudden, stripping Zinnia’s hands of the heavy book with a hard tug. “There’s bound to be more theory on this than there is here.”

But in North City, at least, there wasn’t any more. Zinnia had asked for all the information available under the term ‘alkahestry’, even ‘alchemy’, but only one book had come through.

What was she to do? Maybe she could ask lower regions. This couldn’t be all the data there was in all of Amestris. There was always someone who had travelled through Xing, someone who had learned from someone else.

She couldn’t let Olivier know that she was expanding her area of research, though. That would be as dangerous as admitting she hadn’t disliked making eye contact with her, walking alongside with her, being an adult around her.

“It’ll take a while, but okay,” she finally said. “I’ll bring it them to you as they come, so you won’t have to postpone your business in town.”

Olivier almost grunted. _What business in town does this idiot think I could possibly have?_

“I think I’m more than capable of finding my own way back here,” she commented.

Zinnia laughed. “Never doubted that, General. Shall I walk you to the door now?” Her brown eyes shone inquisitively at Olivier in… a proposition, perhaps? Or just… politeness. That burning, icy politeness. Olivier wished the girl would just treat her coldly all the time, ruthlessly. She didn’t want any of this kindness, even if she could grow to admire it.

Kindness was weakness.

“No,” she said at once, heart lurching up to her throat. _Invader_ …, she thought. But her face was a perfect mask and it denoted no emotion that Zinnia could misinterpret.

Olivier read the confusion in her eyes. _Good…_ She walked away promptly. Her business here was completed.

“Okay, then. Have a good day,” came the confused voice of Zinnia.

One foot already out of Candie’s bookshop, Olivier couldn’t help it. She muttered to herself:

“Likewise.” 

* * *

 

She made sure to call when Candie had gone get them both lunch. It’d only take a few minutes, but she’d already found the phone number in one of the many wrinkly pieces of paper strewn over the counter. Candie had an old rusty phone at the back, right on her tiny desk. Zinnia wasn’t very sure it _worked_ , but it was connected to the main line, so in theory it had to.

The voice that answered sounded a little off, shaky, but still perfectly understandable.

“Um, hi,” Zinnia stuttered. “Central Library?”

“Yes. How can I help?”

“I was wondering, do you have any books concerning alkahestry?”

“I’m not familiar with the term.”

“I’ll spell it.” Zinnia did and patiently waited a few seconds for the other person to note it down. “Anything will do, really. I’ve found it’s a hard topic to find books about.”

“I’ll look through our main records and someone will give you a call in a few days.”

Zinnia made sure they wrote down the number so they could call her to her house phone instead (just in case), and thanked them kindly. And then she just resigned to wait.

She was going to have to eventually ask Candie if this was something she condoned. Maybe she’d never ordered books south of North City. Maybe she _didn’t_ want to. Candie might have loved her little place, but Zinnia was not sure she loved putting too much effort into it. No one usually asked her to.

When Central Library called her again, Zinnia was wrapped up in a thin blanket, huddled in the corner of her couch—she hugged her knees when she picked the phone up.

“There’s a few entries listed in the records,” they told her. “But… it appears that we currently don’t have access to them.”

“What does that mean?” _Nothing good_ , Zinnia thought.

After a brief moment of silence, came the answer:

“They’ve been registered in Central libraries, but their current location and status are unknown.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently about ten chapters ahead and I can only say I am truly delighted with this project, and I hope the story gets a little more interesting to read from here on (I did a reread last weekend and laughed at my own in-story jokes, 'nuff said)


	8. Sleeping strategy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting ahead of schedule because I won't be able to on Thursday, so here it goes :D

Getting interrupted by something important while doing something equally important was basically her job title at this point. She’d been reading long enough that the words began to blur in her mind as she tried to recall them; a little change of scenery would be welcome. She could return to alkahestry later. Leaving the book in one of her drawers, she waited for the knock on the door to become an actual person.

The Mountain Men had returned, so her soldier informed. Buccaneer had requested her presence downstairs with those that had come back. Miles came down with her, as he’d have to pitch this in in the several schedules of the fort, and rotate several turns for the men who’d come back home.

It was routine. All the news they brought was strange sightings in the dirt, markings of what looked like old spells—dark magic. Olivier smiled to herself, the scant and entirely biased history Amestris had concocted about their neighbor Drachma spoke of occasional meddlings with forces greater than a normal human’s.

Back when she’d been no one in this place, she might have believed them. Now, and especially _after_ having informed herself on certain topics, she didn’t believe it was magic anymore. Those might just be the marks of alchemy, of long gone times, and perhaps even related to the healing abilities of alkahestry.

“Major Miles,” she told him, “there’s a book on my desk that might clear some facts. Go get it.”

He nodded and immediately left.

The border held, or so it seemed. Briggs soldiers had been combing the mountains for infiltrators during much of the last decade or so, and so far it still remained more as a preemptive measure than as a way to stop a real threat, at least since Buccaneer’s incident.

Sometimes, perched on the top of the wall, Miles and his fellow men would see smoke marring the horizon and the dew-covered sunlight, but the army Briggs expected to find at their doors one morning never came.

Whatever Drachma was planning, Briggs had no starting point to try and get one step ahead of them. Just trial and error, and working past their normal hours to find a crack in Drachma’s impenetrable armor, and Olivier’s unbreakable command.

Miles didn’t think it wise to intervene, unless she asked. Briggs was known for its unwavering defense protocols, wouldn’t hesitate to bring their own army down on Drachma’s head if necessary, but alchemy was for the dogs at Central. Alchemy was the spark that’d burned Miles’ family’s land to the ground. Studying what could be a tiny clue of something long past didn’t seem, to him, the best way to gain military knowledge on their enemy now.

But Miles knew to obey.

He opened the door to the general’s office and closed it carefully so it wouldn’t slam. _The desk, she’d said?_ It was, as per usual, a mess. People to send back south, people to receive, new plans for the tanks, acquisitions of new weaponry from the east… And all that paperwork went through one single woman. Daily.

But he saw no book here. Perhaps she’d left it in her drawers… Miles didn’t think it twice, although he for one didn’t feel comfortable going off route. A few neatly-folded pieces of paper met his eyes, clearly not the book. He could’ve well moved on to the next drawer, yet he didn’t. These didn’t seem reports or files or anything work-related. Plus, the handwriting wasn’t as neat as that stuff usually was.

His eyes immediately fell drawn to the first lines.

_What is her purpose here, I wonder? A woman standing tall atop a wall, finally come to walk amongst her so-called equals. She walks and she sees, perhaps even observes us. But is she of this place like I might one day be? Does she know that I am not? Does she hope to put us all behind bars if the north still hasn’t decided to adopt us, to coat our hearts in the same unsavory frost hers has always been bathed in?_

It was clear who those words were describing. Miles reread it all of three times trying to understand why this had been written, and who was its author. And most importantly, why on _earth_ would Olivier Armstrong keep anything like this, so nicely preserved, in her personal drawers?

Almost entirely overtaken by curiosity, Miles left that piece of paper back in the drawer and took another one in his roughened hands. And another. And another.

When he finally found the book he’d been sent there to find, he closed all drawers and took it down to the general. But he couldn’t, when he met her blue eyes, hide a small and gentle smile that he knew she wouldn’t understand or imagine anything of.

Olivier kept herself in those drawers—but she did so in someone else’s words. And there were so few reasons why she might do that. She’d once kept an entire album of newspaper headlines about her, calling her names, criticizing her for her post, for her trajectory.

Truth be told, though, it didn’t strike Miles as if that was the case now. 

* * *

 

The men had replicated a few of the carvings—rudimentary, nothing like what Olivier knew a true alchemist could create—on bark from the mountain trees for her to see. None of them were knowledgeable enough about the discipline to be able to tell that those were _unfinished_ transmutation circles.

“Do you recognize these, sir?” Buccaneer had asked Olivier.

All the general could say about these was that the marks in them could never belong to any other discipline.

“They’re familiar in shape,” she said. The circle, the pentagrams inside it… Her men had said that the original circles they’d found were scratched permanently on a particularly dry patch of dirt. “It might be a case of simple alchemy, rather than something more elaborate.” She didn’t feel confident enough on the finding to be conclusive. “In any case, what you describe seems to be old. Very old. It won’t be of use to us now.”

Buccaneer frowned, his entire face wrinkling up in a grimace. He probably expected those marks to be factor in someone on Briggs’ plan against Drachma, or at least shed some light on what the enemy had in mind.

“What do you propose we do?” he asked.

“We’ll keep sending men out,” Olivier said, matching his frown, “until something solid comes out of it. Or until nothing does.” She glanced at Miles’ perfectly neutral stance by her side. She knew he didn’t think ‘nothing’ was ever Drachma’s plan, just like it wasn’t theirs. She agreed. “And let’s hope nothing _does,_ ” she added, though. That way, either it would be confirmed that the Drachman had become cowardly idiots since their last attack or that Briggs’ strategy could finally move on to something different. Perhaps even incursions on foreign land. “That’s all for now. You may leave.”

The last batch of Mountain Men saluted her and took the elevator to their respective bunks. They wouldn’t be on mountain duty again for a long while. Olivier hoped that would bring comfort to them, fully aware that it would certainly not bring her that.

 “The next batch will be ready to depart in the morning,” Buccaneer announced, crossing her arms tightly over his chest as well as the metal automail allowed.

Olivier nodded. She motioned for Miles to hand her over the book he’d asked for. Miles’ arms thanked her for it, its weight more bothersome after a while, but her hands were perfectly still as she held it up to check something. Confirmation on the shape of the circles, perhaps.

“I’d like your say on something,” she said. Both men came closer to take a look, although what she wanted their opinion on wasn’t explicitly mentioned on those pages. “This covers the basics. Barely. As far as I know, any person instructed in it can learn alchemy.” She paused for effect. “But is it the same for alkahestry? Would anybody be able to learn? Would an alchemist?”

“Wasn’t your brother an alchemist?” Buccaneer asked with a mischievous grin.

The general’s dislike for her younger sibling was not news to veteran Briggs soldiers. Especially not the captain.

As expected, Olivier glared at him, almost growled: “A _state_ alchemist,” she said. “Do I need to remind you why Briggs will never house one of them?” She shot one quick look to Miles, who remained motionless. “Perhaps Major Miles would like to explain to you why?”

A region reduced to ashes, its population scattered to the winds, not allowed to remain on Amestrian grounds as far as the military was concerned. Olivier didn’t respect what had been done there, nor he who had given the order for giving it, but she wouldn’t extend any kindness to her brother for refusing to do his duty there either. Instead, now he had to atone for the evils of Ishval and his desertion both. At least the soldiers Olivier knew from Eastern Command would only torture themselves for Ishval, never for both having committed attrocities there and having been defeated by themselves while committing them.

“I’m sure he’ll be interested in helping us, anyway...” Buccaneer muttered. To anybody else it might look curious to see a seven-foot tall man of sixty years looking away from a commanding officer in fear—and a commanding office he’d once teased when he’d been a higher rank than her—but Miles merely held back a smile.

Olivier shook her head, trying to stay focused.

“This doesn’t concern the likes of him.”

Then, Miles’ eyes opened wide, “Sir, alkahestry is of Xingese origin, isn’t it?”

Olivier nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“Then all of our questions could be answered by someone from Xing,” he said.

Inevitably, the mention of the country, far east beyond their borders, brought some memories back. Of the titanic magnolia’s tree under which Olivier had used to study for her exams on military history as Ianthe read up on Amestrian flora like one would seek stories about valiant heroes saving the world. Ianthe knew every flower, every tree, every bush on Amestrian territory. To her there’d been no south, no north, no east nor west. Just the heliantheae in the dry grassland, dianthus defying the winter frost, the dandelions near the desert, and cowslips in the damper soils. She knew their names, and the scientific terms they went by. But Ianthe had loved magnolias the most, a flower of cultural significance for her kin across the desert. Of Xingese descent, Ianthe’s family had been established for two generations in Amestris by the time Olivier had met her.

If Olivier could get back in touch with her now, would Ianthe know the intricate details of a force she’d once spoken of as a flow of living energy? And even so, even if Ianthe knew the answers to Olivier’s questions—wherever she was now—, nothing guaranteed a soldier from Briggs could learn alkahestry.

Olivier still remembered Ianthe’s address. But nobody here knew a word of that past life of hers. She couldn’t just bleed openly for everyone to see, unbury it all for the sake of just one of her many alternatives to outsmarting Drachma.

Major Miles continued explaining what he’d thought out, unaware that his general had been miles and miles away for a second.

“Or perhaps an operation past the desert would be in our best interest, since Drachma still appears to be dormant enough for now.”

Olivier calculated at once the cost of such a mission, the risks she’d be taking if that was Drachma’s way of weakening her fort’s defenses, having them cross the desert in search for answers to something that had only been a trap. Briggs might fall, then, and Olivier could not— _would_ not—let that happen while she was still standing.

She’d find another way to make alkahestry work. She was still waiting on news from the flower girl in the bookshop, after all. But she didn’t tell her adjutants that much.

 “We won’t invest so much in such an unelaborate plan. But,” she said markedly, “I might be able to get my hands on more detailed information soon.” 

* * *

 

She hadn’t asked so far, because she’d assumed there’d been nothing to tell. But now, looking at the disaster of a woman chasing after dozens of sheets of paper that’d been blown away by the wind, ice-cream in hand, Olivier wasn’t so sure she’d made the right decision in not asking more often. As always, she’d have to just demand what she wanted, or… hint very heavily at the fact that she expected, at the very least, regular updates.

In the shade, Zinnia had barely managed to stomp on the last of her stray sheets, out of breath, when Olivier approached her, boots thumping loudly on the ground.

“Have you received note of any of the books I asked for?” she asked.

“Actually,” Zinnia said, blushing. She still found it very very hard to look at the general in the eye. It was like popping an ice cube in your mouth. “I called several places, like you asked.” _You’re such a filthy liar, Zin,_ she told herself, trying not to blush harder. She’d called _one_ place, the _best_ place one could go to for books, and they’d had nothing, so no other place ever would. But having demonstrated clear interest in Olivier’s odd quest wasn’t something Zinnia wanted to make public. “All they’ve been able to tell me is that those books have—” She lowered her gaze even more, as if expecting a reprimand. “—disappeared.”

“Books don’t just _disappear,_ ” Olivier scowled.

“No, I know. I just didn’t know how else to explain it briefly. I know you must be very busy.”

Now it was time for Olivier to blush. She hoped to death the girl would attribute it to frustration.

“Quit appealing to how ‘busy’ I’m supposed to be and explain,” she said, bluntly. “However detailedly as you see fit.”

Zinnia gulped, nodded, and started to talk.

She told it all and she told it true, word for word as it’d been told to her, not cutting down on her own opinions on it. General Armstrong might be generally unpleasant to speak to, for diverse reasons, but still Zinnia didn’t wish her a long and useless frantic search for something that everybody hadn’t kept tags on for years.

 Still, if Olivier wanted to waste time and resources taking the same calls Zinnia had, she was welcome to. Zinnia wouldn’t involve herself any further.

And Olivier did try to find more data on her own in the following days and weeks, convinced this lack of information couldn’t be entirely objective, owing in part to the flower girl’s incompetence. But Olivier kept hitting wall after wall, and eventually had no choice but to admit she’d arrived to the same conclusion Zinnia had: there were indeed no books on alkahestry left in Amestris that anybody could physically find.

Curious. All the more _curious_...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bit of trivia because I love it:** According to Wikipedia, the heliantheae is actually the tribe of the zinnia flower. Incidentally it contains Ianthe's name and I literally found out about this yesterday while revising my manuscripts and I laughed out loud because it's too good to be true.  
>  Also, another discovery of mine is that there's actually a character named [Zinnia](https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/e/e5/Omega_Ruby_Alpha_Sapphire_Zinnia.png) in Pokemon, which is something I feel I should've known before


	9. When the finish line keeps moving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“I don't think you're leaving. I think you're running. And what I can't figure out is, are you running towards something you want? Or are you running from something you're afraid to want?”_ —Maid In Manhattan (2002)

The only truly quiet place on the never stopping organized chaos of Briggs just had to be the corridor on which Olivier’s office was. You could just sit there, waiting for an opening to go talk to her, and might as well get lost in the routine of the soldiers walking by. Nobody gathered here, everybody came and went in perfect order, knowing where they had to be and why.

Buccaneer and Miles had been sitting outside of the office for a while now. Buccaneer had come half an hour before, at the break of dawn, ready to bring his half-request half-complaint to the general only to find Miles already waiting for her there. He’d told him she was probably queuing for the showers—they were quite busy at this hour. Briggs was an ongoing forge of activity all night long as well, but most things still followed a normal, typical morning schedule. Miles was in charge of it being so. He was extraordinarily good at making these little things work, he was the person who wound the clock this fort was.

The two men had yawned a few times in each other’s company, ready to fall asleep against the rough gray wall if Olivier didn’t arrive to work soon, when they’d started going through the recent gossip. About the newbies adapting slowly (Austin had finally learned to mingle without acting like a Central soldier all the time), about the few romances springing just as the flowers reached their full bloom, and finally, after biting his tongue for nearly twenty minutes, Miles had told Buccaneer about… the letters.

“So, what would you say they are? _Love_ letters?” Buccaneer said, once Miles had caught him up with the news, quotes included. The amusement in his voice was almost a tangible thing.

“Well, they’re not _love_ letters exactly.” Miles replied. He was sure Buccaneer would’ve loved for them to be so, they’d be able to quietly laugh about it all for months. But, he supposed, the mystery around this little discovery would also be interesting to unveil, or to try to, anyway. Whatever reasons Olivier had for doing things, most of the time that wasn’t information privy to them.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Buccaneer laughed merrily, clearly in disagreement.

There were many types of love letters, and just because these didn’t have hearts over the ‘i’s and overcomplicated figures of speech didn’t mean the person writing them hadn’t tried to convey something not even the best poets had managed to pin down to a satisfactory description.

Miles opened his mouth in the shape of an ‘o’ when he realized what Buccaneer meant with his little amused face. “Someone from the fort?”

To his surprise, Buccaneer shook his head.

“The general might care for everybody on this base, Miles, just like we all care about her. But think about it: who, other than us, can say they’re close to her?”

Close, in this case, was meant literally. The only people who spent more than a fleeting moment discussing matters with her were her right-hand man and the man without a right hand.

“We’re not her friends. No one here is her friend,” Miles pointed out. “She can’t afford to have them.”

“Exactly.” Buccaneer said. “It has to be someone from the outside, someone she can’t order about.”

Miles snorted. “So you’re saying someone under her command can’t fall in love with her?”

Half her troops might as well have _been_ in love with her at some point, she inspired as much fear as she did infatuation. He himself had used to think he was, until she’d caught him blushing at something she’d said and had only proceeded to yell louder until it had gotten through to Miles’ head that there would be no way, ever, that Olivier Armstrong would even so much as look at her soldiers that way. Although it was true that nobody really knew the real reason for that.

Buccaneer only grinned back at Miles with wise innocence.

“Power dynamics, my friend,” he concluded. “It would never work out without things having to change a _lot_. I personally don’t see that happening.”

Miles didn’t either, to be honest. Everybody here might’ve taken one curious look at her as a possible partner at some time, but they all ended up burying their heads in work in the end. This was what mattered when one lived and worked at Briggs: the work itself. And she who guided them through it was just as involved in that one shared goal.

“I suppose you’re right…” he just said.

But who could it be, then? Who could’ve taken a look at their fierce general and decided to write about the image she gave to the world and the woman—realer, mysterious, capable of breaking—that lay beneath the surface?

Miles sighed. Both he and Buccaneer remained quiet for a couple of minutes. Neither of them had any answers. They’d just wanted to gossip a little, laugh at how impossible it was to find love in this place, especially for Olivier. But now they were both worried, weren’t they?

Then Buccaneer slowly leaned towards Miles and said:

“And are you sure I can’t just take a quick look? It’ll clear things up. My say will be conclusive.”

Miles practically face-palmed at that. “I shouldn’t have told you, should I?”

He didn’t even know why he bothered. These men liked gossip more than he himself did, and that was saying something—catching up to the current news in the fort was one of Miles’ favorite pastimes. The range of activities one could do for leisure remained… scarce, to this day.

“Well, we’re friends, Miles. Yes, you should’ve.”

Miles punched him hard in the arm that _wasn’t_ made of metal.

“Stop laughing,” he hissed. “She’s going to kill me for even telling you this much…”

First, Buccaneer gave a quick, low chuckle, but then he supported his huge head on his hand, elbow on knee, looking too pensive for his usual type. Miles _really_ shouldn’t have told him.

“Why would she keep them, though?” Buccaneer asked. “Is it some kind of pride thing, like with the newspapers?”

“That kind of thing empowered her. I don’t think _this_ in particular would.”

“Why not? If she found strength in insults, she could easily—”

“It’s different. These paragraphs, basically, what they do is more or less bare her to the naked eye. The eye of the writer, in this case—”

Judging by Buccaneer’s paling expression and his widely opened eyes, Miles knew how to shut up in the precise moment Olivier herself walked past them, key in hand to get into her own office.

Without a curt ‘good morning’ first, she just nodded at them as a greeting.

 “If you’re talking about naked people,” she said, “this is definitely not the place.”

She didn’t look particularly bothered by it. In her younger days, she’d usually join Buccaneer in the obscene talk after work. But now she had to bite her tongue a little more than he did. Someone had to set the example for how much bullshit would be allowed.

“Sorry, boss.” Buccaneer quickly said.

She almost smiled. Her Captain was the only person here she would allow to call her ‘boss’, she’d send almost anybody else to a cell if they did the same thing, which most knew not to do, with the glorious exception of the youngest members of the Briggs crew. It always brought a few good-natured laughs to see them follow Buccaneer’s example and have that grant them punishment.

“I had a request to make,” Buccaneer continued, standing up alongside Miles and following Olivier into the office. “Miles was only keeping me company.”

She turned to the major:

“Will you be able to work with both of us here?”

Miles shook his head slowly.

“No problem, sir.” 

* * *

 

The tenuous sunlight at this hour filtered through the bookshop’s windows onto the counter. Zinnia sat there, knees crossed, one elbow on the counter and her other hand turning pages in the most absolute tedium.

_An obsolete set of roads and paths connect the towns north of North City, leading back there where trains will be available to travel anywhere south, but what of the Briggs mountains? Are there any paths that go through them? What were they used for before the Drachman conflict? Are they still used now?_

“Whatcha reading there?” Candie’s voice interrupted Zinnia’s—bleak as it was—train of thought.

Zinnia immediately closed the book and left it on the counter, as if it wasn’t hers and she had no connection to it whatsoever. Which made no sense at all, why would she want to feign disconnection to something as silly as this? Nothing could be made out of it without context, and Zinnia herself was the only one that had context, didn’t she?

Well, maybe every other neighbor who’d seen her sitting in the sun day in and day out might _also_ have an idea… But then again, maybe everybody would think she was just interested in the area she currently lived in. That was a normal thing in her, getting curious about things in general.

_Yes, general… that’s the key word here. General._

“Oh nothing,” she quickly said, though. “Paths in the mountains and all that.”

“Why would you read _that_?” Candie chuckled.

“I got no work this morning. Nobody’s come in yet.”

Candie smirked at her, sitting on the stool next to Zinnia’s, “Hasn’t General Armstrong come down today?”

Zinnia opened her eyes wide. That was hell of a specific question. Very specific, tremendously specific and not at all expected, although maybe she should’ve expected it, prepared for it somehow.

Had there been any announcements made to the town? Did the entirety of Iver know now that the Ice Queen came to _this_ bookstore in particular and talked to _this_ particular southern girl about the books she so sorely needed?

They might as well do now that Candie had mentioned it.

“N-no, why would she?” Zinnia stuttered, pretending to be fine and cool and all of those things that she obviously was not. “I already, um, got her what she needed a few days ago.”

Zinnia looked away. What she’d needed and _more_. Zinnia had let her good faith take over and she’d made many calls to many different libraries and booksellers over the entire country. If Candie found out about that, she’d grow madly curious too and want to get her hands on the books herself.

Again, why did Zinnia bother with these things? Nobody had asked her to!

“What did she want, anyway?” Candie asked in the end. Zinnia let out all of the air in her lungs, hugely relieved that Candie didn’t know about the…extra hours. “I found it strange she’d come here. Normally she doesn’t leave her fort, but…”

Zinnia answered immediately and in a higher pitch than usual. “Something tactical, I think.”

Candie snorted. “Then no wonder we had none of that here.”

“Nope!” Zinnia said.

There was never anything here, and if there was, it was just a book or two, something to just get started with. Zinnia almost never had to order books from other places. Zinnia almost never had to worry about said books outside of this small bookshop.

And she was never going to do that again, it had been decided. No more going out of her way for something that meant that little and would only grant her grunts in return. It would have been way kinder for Olivier to at least pay her phone bill…

“Good morning!” suddenly said a friendly voice.

Zinnia allowed herself two seconds of hope before she turned her face to the door and saw the neighbor that made Iver’s strongest coffee. That’d been one of the lessons she’d learned lately: to definitely avoid anything called coffee in this town.

“Sorry to come in like this, but I just heard from Southy that the last book he bought here was a tremendous read. I was wondering if you still had copies?”

For a while, Zinnia watched as the other woman and Candie held a very interesting yet spiraling conversation about remembering book titles as a very useful thing to do when you want people to get a copy for you. After that, Zinnia made a little small talk, about town life. Gossip about the other neighbors, coffee ( _Why_? Zinnia wanted to ask. _Why_???), and the south. Always the south. As if there wasn’t _plenty_ up north Zinnia would kill to gossip about too.

In the end, and with as little as Candie and Zinnia had to work with, they did find an older copy of the book Southy had bought a few days ago. It was about a cat. Zinnia tried to lose interest as soon as she saw the title. Cats were a touchy subject for her. She merely grabbed it from the shelf and got it to its new owner.

Then, after their neighbor left, happy with her new book under her arm, and she’d said bye, Candie sat in a stool in front of Zinnia again.

“You’ve adapted well, huh?” she commented casually.

“It’s not that big of a change.” Zinnia shrugged.

It had been, but not too dramatically that she’d mull about it for weeks. It’d mainly been an inner struggle, as always. The town had had no problems with her, and they weren’t going to. They thought of her as if she belonged. She did, to them. In her own eyes, Zinnia was still a separate entity from them. From everyone. And _certain people_ hadn’t helped make her feel like Iver was, finally, the place where she’d feel she was allowed to stay and settle.

“Where have you lived before?” Candie asked, probably still curious about her, about a small woman living a life that was far too big for her size. “You mentioned _south_.”

Zinnia didn’t mean to laugh at that, but she ended up doing so. She might’ve told Candie about that sometime, yes, during the long hours they spent here, mostly without any work to be done. But she didn’t think she’d specified where. Candie probably thought she’d lived a few miles south of North City and nothing more.

To them, Amestris was divided in two: the Briggs mountains and, then, the _south._

_Such a huge, immeasurable south,_ Zinnia had used to think. Now, after a few years of living away from home, she thought of Amestris as what it was: a small country where her chances of belonging were thinning the more places she went to live in.

The south hadn’t brought her what she’d expected of it, just like Iver and its beautiful conception of north probably wouldn’t either.

“I lived near the border with Aerugo before coming here,” she finally said.

“You sure like your borders, kid,” Candie said, chuckling. “Is there a reason in particular you’d move from one side of the country to another?”

Zinnia shrugged again. “I thought I could use the contrast.”

“And you plan on keeping on moving, don’t you? Contrast this with something else, something you hope will be better?”

It wasn’t spoken harshly. Candie’s eyes told Zinnia that she _saw,_ that she hadn’t been fooled like everybody else here. Candie saw the marks on Zinnia’s aura that set her apart, even when she was part of this town now, and she didn’t choose to make uncomfortable remarks about it.

Jokes might have been one of Candie’s favorite strings to pull, but she knew when and how. Not now, she’d seen.

“Probably, yeah,” Zinnia finally admitted. “I never really stay too long anywhere.”

“Why? You told me you have a family, didn’t you?”

Zinnia nodded. A prosperous family, friends who called because they missed her and still harbored hopes that she’d return for good one day, ready to resume their friendship like they were still fifteen.

Anthony and her parents had waited for years, and Zinnia knew they still would. Maybe that’s what families did: they waited and waited, even when you’d made it clear that there was nothing to wait for anymore.

“Someone so young, travelling so far… for what?” Candie kept saying. “Just distance? I don’t get it.”

No, she wouldn’t have. If anybody ever had, Zinnia would’ve knelt before them, tearful, and grabbed at the hem of their clothes, begging them to tell her.

“Me neither,” she replied. “I just get tired. Everything feels too familiar one day, and I suddenly can’t stay there anymore.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just… have no home anywhere.”

Candie frowned. Her face was no longer coated in curiosity or pity, but full understanding, that kind of profound understanding Zinnia pleaded for as much as she was terrified of it.

She gulped, expecting harsh words to come now. She’d just told her current boss that she wasn’t going to stay in Iver for long. She could get fired for this, preemptively. And then Zinnia _would_ be forced to take off earlier, without sufficient money to pay her rent.

The thought, for some reason, made her shiver although it wasn’t chilly these days anymore.

“You know what I think, Zinnia?” Candie said, eyes looking into Zinnia, calmly. Softly, even. It was intended as a kindness rather than the advice Zinnia usually got—always meant to keep her wherever she was at the time, tie her up to that place and make her feel like she was a failure for feeling the _need_ to leave. “I know I don’t know enough about you to really get a say, but if I did, what I’d tell you is that I think you’re running.”

That got Zinnia’s attention. Like a hammer had hit her chest and left her gasping for air.

_Running?_ Was this running? How could it be, she wasn’t being chased by anything she was scared of? She didn’t have any races to win.

“In circles, and back to the same starting point,” Candie continued. And Zinnia gulped over and over; she understood, of course she did, but she didn’t want to. She’d longed for it, for the moment she’d finally hear these exact words, because she’d needed to hear them. But now that she knew why they were being spoken, and what they entailed, Zinnia refused to let them in.

She understood, of course she did, but she _didn’t want to_.

 “That’s why you get frustrated,” Candie said. Her eyes looked… sad? Mother-like, even. Gentle. Zinnia wanted to wipe the unshed tears away from her boss’s face. “You’re trying to chase something that can’t just be _sought._ It finds you or it doesn’t, but looking for it won’t make _you_ find it faster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ me after writing this: subtle much??
> 
> yesterday I finished writing the last chapter for this first arc (about 9 chapters ahead), and in retrospective I think the subject of 'home' is brought up more often than I'd planned, but I kinda like it


	10. Permission denied, permission granted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess we could call this Part II of the RunningTM ^^

Finally sitting in Olivier’s office, Buccaneer didn’t think twice before he just said what he’d gotten up so early for. It was better not to beat around the bush, especially with her. The less babbling involved, the higher his odds.

“I want to join this morning’s batch,” he said.

Olivier’s response was just as swift and definite.

“No.”

“But sir—”

She tidied up her desk as she spoke, eyes on the sheets of paper she was arranging.

“What made you think my answer had changed since the last time, Captain? You will remain here, where you’re needed,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“With all due respect, if there’s something fishy going on with Drachma, I’ll be of help in the mountains. More than here, sir.”

He showed off his metal arm, as if saying he had no use for it here but could definitely put it to work severing heads if the incursions ever ran into Drachman soldiers.

Olivier shot him a quick look, tired although she had waken up not that long ago.

“How old are you, Buccaneer?”

“Turned sixty this year.” He chuckled, tossing his braid back. He certainly didn’t look his age, and she’d never been one to keep track of that kind of personal information. As long as the people under her performed well, she didn’t care whether they were fresh out of the academy or veterans of a few wars, hence she never paid attention to birth dates.

“Do you know what that means,” she said, “in the military?”

“Should I?” Another chuckle. So he didn’t know, did he?

Did anyone, really? Most died or had to leave before they reached that age. Both she and the captain knew, just as well as Miles did, carefully pretending not to eavesdrop on them.

“Retirement,” Olivier said, answering her own question. “As of the age of sixty-one, you’re eligible to retire.” She paused, trying to paint him the pretty picture that she hardly believed in herself when she pondered about her own withdrawal from the force. “Haven’t you ever given it a thought? A quiet happy life, somewhere warm—”

Buccaneer laughed out loud, histrionically. It was like witnessing an avalanche. That man sure could change the tension in a room for disruptive guffawing about something that didn’t even make that much sense. He himself brought hilarity everywhere.

Not that it mattered now. This was nothing to laugh about. In a year she might have to do without one of her most trusted soldiers, and he’d be left to deal with the civilian world he wasn’t used to anymore. How many years had he been serving at Briggs? Longer than she’d been alive? The shock of that could kill a man, but so could being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Me? Somewhere warm?” He had been born and raised in the north, she knew that much. No wonder he disliked the idea of sun and mild weather. Once you grew used to the tortuous cold of the north, anything warmer became the true torture; one could add layers of clothing in the cold, but in the heat not even full nudity would make you feel less … sweaty. “What the hell would I do there?”

Olivier shrugged.

“Whatever you pleased,” she said, mostly because she couldn’t come up with anything more believable at the moment. She, herself, wouldn’t know where to go, when the time came— _if_ the time came. And the thought of going back to the family life she’d made sure to leave behind turned her stomach.

“I’m not _retiring,_ ” Buccaneer snapped, finally understanding this was serious. _“_ I got a few more good years left in me, you won’t be getting rid of me that easily.”

But Olivier didn’t bulge one bit.

“You’re under my orders, correct?”

He seemed to hesitate a little, but then said:

“Always.”

“And do you remember how you agreed to follow them all?”

Buccaneer’s face was as red as a poppy flower, so she took it for a yes.

“Good. Because I’m filing you for retirement in a year. I don’t care what you do or where you go, but you’ll do that away from this fort.”

Puzzled, Buccaneer gulped. She could see the fear in his small dark eyes. He’d probably expected a rebuke to his request, nothing more, definitely not word on the fact that he would soon cease to be useful to the military in her eyes.

“Sir,” he said, his voice low, “if this is some sort of punishment, I can assure you, I—”

Softly, sadly, she spoke:

“It’s not, Captain.”

“Then why?” He looked truly heartbroken, deflated. “I come here requesting permission to join a mission, and you spring this on me without warning _._ ”

_Like you’re a child to me and I’m twenty years your senior… It feels that way yes,_ she thought. _But I’m doing what you used to. Nothing more._

Olivier looked at him. She could lie, say something generic about following the rules or keeping her promise to keep him alive, then send him on his way, and he would simply grunt to himself and do as he was told. But she didn’t want him to leave this room without at least getting an idea—distorted as it might be—that she wasn’t imposing this on him as any sort of torment.

“I want you—and everybody else— _safe_ ,” Olivier said. “For now, you’re safer on Briggs than out there in the mountains, so that’s where I’m keeping you.” She pierced his eyes with hers. “But there will come a time when you _will_ be safer out in the world as a civilian, and make no mistake, soldier, that’s where I’ll send you when the time is right.”

“I don’t understand,” Buccaneer muttered.

Olivier bit back a soft smile. But she was not soft. She was the North Star, guiding the way north, relentless, unmovable. Cold. _He_ needed her to be that person now, and then one day he would go back to this moment and finally comprehend the reasons behind her severity.

“I don’t expect you to understand, I expect you to obey,” she said, merciless as they all knew her to be. She didn’t add the thought that came to mind as soon as she was done speaking, she didn’t tell him she also expected him to stay alive. “Can you do that or can you not?”

Buccaneer held her gaze for thirty seconds, sure, she thought, that if he kept going she’d get off her high horse and agree to his request.

_Stop fighting me, Captain,_ she thought. _Stop fighting and surrender._

Finally, after a long exhale, he did:

“Yes, sir.”

She returned her gaze to the paperwork she’d been arranging without a second thought.

“Good,” she said. “Now get the hell out.”

She flinched when Buccaneer slammed the door behind him, but not because of the noise. Miles cleared his throat at his desk next to hers, and she was sure he was about to say something about what he’d just heard, so she steered clear of his red eyes and avoided confrontation.

She didn’t need him to tell her what she already knew. 

* * *

 

“So where will you go next?” Candie asked in the end, when she finally accepted that Zinnia wasn’t going to reply to what she’d said earlier about running.

For a moment, the younger woman thought about it. About the options she had and how fast they’d run out if she kept clinging to them instead of living the moment.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll stay in the north.” She did like how quiet it was, how nice the people were. Some other places she’d seen were a thousand times more beautiful, but the townspeople were… not this hospitable.

“But not here,” Candie pointed out.

“But not here,” Zinnia confirmed with a nod.

‘Here’ was temporary. This country, most likely, was just temporary. These people, this life… She _was_ running, wasn’t she? But was she running from the past licking at her heels or was she sprinting to be the first who crossed the finish line?

Anthony, Dew, her mother, her father, her childhood friends… did they have staying power? Did the neat, unimaginable future have the capacity to tug harder at her? Hadn’t that been the case for the past years?

“Well…” Candie said, getting closer to her to kiss her forehead, gently. Her hand brushed away Zinnia’s grown-out bangs. “I hope you do find your home, little flower.”

Zinnia wrinkled her nose.

“Just because my parents went and saw a pretty flower to name me after doesn’t mean _I_ like the wretched things…” she grumbled.

Candie laughed softly and then sighed. She took one good look at Zinnia before she moved her hands away from her face.

“Go home, come on,” she said, although it was still early. “You’re done for the day.”

It was funny, how the concept of home was used in conversation, thrown into it like it meant nothing more than a collection of walls and furniture where one was safe enough to sleep.

Zinnia did go _home_ —skipping her usual writing time in the main street’s little square—but she was greeted by just a house. A truly old house.

A house with her things in it.

Notebooks, a couple novels she knew by heart—maybe that was her true home, hidden away for eternity in the pages of an ancient story—, all those dresses and tights because pants were not her friends, knives to chop food, knives to throw at flour bags, the pen her dad had given her years ago that she didn’t actually use but still kept for its sentimental value.

And all of it fit into a compact bag. Her life was one fucking travel bag, but none of this stuff would grow seeds anywhere if she ever wanted to settle. It was all a reminder of past times, her roots, in a way.

She could always ditch it all somewhere in the valley, get a cloak, and get lost in the mountains, declare herself missing. She’d know her way, she always did. She’d find a cave, start a fire, and eat her way through summer, fall, and winter. And when the ice melted and gave their rivers their true fluid shape back, she’d cross the mountain range into foreign land.

And she’d hide in the crowds. Nobody would even be able to tell where she was coming from, or who she was. A true clean start.

Nobody would find her because nobody would miss her. When you take a pebble from the shore of a river, the river doesn’t cry because it’s gone, does it? Neither does the bigger, sturdier rock on its path. Nor the other tiny stones under the surface of the water.

The river just runs its course. As all rivers do. Either they flood or they run dry, they don’t stop flowing for anybody. Least of all for a summer flower that grew there when she shouldn’t have.

Those were dark, dark things to be talking about, and Zinnia didn’t want to have to remember the conversation from earlier about running. That was too big a word for her. She’d never intentionally _run,_ all she was doing was trying to find her place, wherever that was, and putting distance between that goal and everybody else’s desire to have her stay.

Some still wished her back by their side, some still saw the sixteen-year-old. But she was almost twice that old now. She didn’t own anybody anything.

And just like that, the phone rang, reminding her that she still had ties to her past, and that she definitely wasn’t strong enough to sever them—not today, not soon, maybe not ever.

She picked it up, legs over the back of her couch.

“I’m supposed to be in the bookshop, you know?” she said. “If you’d called any other day, I wouldn’t be able to answer.”

“So how come you’re not at work?” Anthony said.

“There wasn’t much to do. I think my boss has _also_ gone home. Not a lot of people like books here.”

“Your boss would grow rich if you were a customer instead of a worker.”

“I don’t want to read now,” she said, pouting like a child on purpose. “I want to write my own stuff.”

Anthony laughed tensely. “And how’s that going for ya?”

She would’ve punched him for that if he’d been there, but instead she went on and on about things, staying on the surface as much as she could. When she was done, she then listened as he shared the latest town gossip with her and made a few jokes that she felt were a little too forced, like he was trying to steer clear from something important by distracting her.

When she finally dared to ask about her parents—another sign that maybe it would take a while to be able to sever, or at least loosen, the tether that still tied her back to Central—, Anthony went quiet very suddenly, confirming her suspicions that he’d been hiding something from her. Something he would only lie around because it was difficult to say, and because it was important.

“Spit it out,” she urged him. “Whatever it is, it can’t ruin my day much more than it already has been.”

It was such meant as a dramatic exaggeration. She’d had much worse days, today had just been tough on her because there were things she wasn’t ready to hear and fully process yet. Today, even taking that into account, had been another blessing. She didn’t know what she’d been complaining about, she didn’t. She _had_ nothing to complain about, even in a place that had the potential to be home and still wasn’t, even when she was so confused every day whenever she sat down in the square and waited, even when she thought about her future. Zinnia had absolutely _nothing_ to complain about.

But she only saw that side of the coin when she heard Anthony take in a sharp breath and mutter:

“It’s—it’s your dad…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, welcome to that subplot that wasn't in the initial outlines for this fic and that's a complete novelty for me because it strays a little from the usual stuff I've been writing lately. Hope you enjoy <3
> 
>  
> 
> (also, I just have to say it: I love Buccaneer's scenes in the whole fic. He is such a wholesome character :D)


	11. You’re only gone if someone misses you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and this is the subplot I invented halfway through writing this first arc and whose existence I owe entirely to binge-eating while outlining. It’s a little different from what I’m used to writing about, so please bear with me :3

Things kept on marching as well as one could have expected them to. Two more shifts of men had left for the mountains… without Buccaneer, of course. He would scowl for a couple of days about Olivier explicitly forbidding him to, and then he’d just forget about it.

All of this act,—the puppy eyes, the pucker in his lips—it amounted to nothing more than a feeble attempt at getting a second chance at flicking his past off.

That man didn’t miss his arm, or his younger valor, and he really hadn’t lost any of his stubbornness from then either, but he sure did still long for a fist fight in the snow against an enemy that in his mind had no shape and stood in a puddle of his own blood. He really didn’t care much about who he hit, he just wanted to hit something. And if he could help out while he did that, then fantastic, Olivier wouldn’t yell at him as much as she would if he simply went out there on a vengeance.

It was a good thing she was _not_ going to let him out. He excelled at tracing the routes for those younger men to go on, he excelled at figuring out how many provisions they’d take, he excelled at waiting them for every time. He didn’t worry too much like she did. That’s why she still needed him here. This program worked because of him.

And it would certainly fall apart if it had to be someone else in charge of it in case he ever started involving himself personally in the incursions, which he wasn’t. Buccaneer would live out the rest of his useful military days ordering people about and cracking bad jokes; that’s how it should be, and how she wanted it to be.

Olivier left the fort at lunch break. Because she could afford this little hour out in the world. Such a small world, with such different rules. It was almost like a dream, that this existed right under her nose and that she had access at it, limited as it was.

She’d be skipping out on a full meal to do this, but it was worth it, and she’d almost always get some food from the kitchens later and bring it to her office anyway.

The town breathed the kind of life that Olivier had willingly, gladly given up on. People knew each other, even if in a bigger city they’d never even exchange two words. The baker with the little place Olivier went to and a butcher, a bookshop owner and a farmer, a city girl and the Northern Wall of Briggs…

In a larger settlement, Olivier would have never stopped in the middle of a street to rudely tell off a newcomer. In such places that she was familiar with—Central, or East City, or even North City—, there were officers patrolling the streets for a reason, so people like her didn’t have to bother. But she’d bothered, after all.

In different circumstances, Olivier would never have crossed a word with the flower girl. She would have never wanted to, either. But, here, she kept coming back, she kept circling around the town before she ventured into the main street. She kept pretending it didn’t make her feel the same way she’d felt on her first incursion into Drachma.

Her heart sped up a little, not enough to constitute a warning that her ice wall was thawing again, and she walked more slowly. It was such a short street, she wanted to savor every step.

Today, the sun was a little higher on the sky than usual. Its warmth was no longer pleasant and had directly become the scorching ball of fire the north had learned to respect. With burned crops and draughts, the typically bad food turned to ash in their mouths if summer came on too strong.

But life in Iver remained more or less the same. The same sweets, the same garments in the shops’ windows (already being sewn for the depths of winter), the same cobblestone, the same people walking around. _Clockwork, of a different kind_ , she thought. This one didn’t need someone checking on it in case the gears got a little rusty.

Olivier didn’t realize how much her thoughts were relying on the cyclic nature of life here until she literally was right at the spot where main street, minor streets, and the main square merged into one another. A spot she’d hardly paid attention to before this spring and that now was almost an obligatory stop in her way.

A spot that today was not occupied by the usual tenant.

Olivier stood there for a moment, looking at the empty space in front her, shrugged, and went on her way.

It was decidedly too late for the flower girl to still be there. The sun was too high, it was too hot. And Olivier had never stayed there long enough to find how much time the girl actually spent in her chair, looking at the world with her big brown eyes like it’d been drawn for her to write about. So absurd, that eyes like those could see more clearly than anybody else what stood there, right in front of them. It was such a waste of talent.

Olivier didn’t make much of this absence, though, mostly attributing it to the late hour. She was not to make anything out of this, not at all. Everybody here had lives, boring and fruitless as they were. Lives to go back to when lunch break was over. She would simply have to come back another day, that was all.

_Or_ … perhaps she could just stay here a while longer, walking around in the sun instead of sitting in her office watching the hours tick by. 

* * *

 

Zinnia had sat for an hour at the station in North City. She’d missed the previous train, after a long while in the back of a smelly cart being pulled by even smellier oxen to get to the city.

Then, when the train that would take her back to her homeland had finally opened its doors for the passengers to start getting in, she’d spent another twenty minutes waiting for the engines to awaken from their slumber.

At least she’d found a decent place to sit. It was early enough that she was one of the very few people aboard this train, but she guessed not many more would get in even as the departure time neared.

She tapped her fingers on the hard covers of her notebook. If the driver was on a coffee break, it had already lasted long enough. The north might be well-known for its strict customs and that obnoxious habit of theirs to always follow the same rules, but its people sure did become lax when it suited them.

Or maybe Zinnia was just too anxious to get this over with as soon as possible.

When the train finally started moving, slowly, like a beast yawning and stretching before setting off to hunt, she found herself letting out a long deep breath.

Now she’d really done it. She was really doing it, and there was no going back, no stopping this train to get off and run and run and hide.

But she should have felt proud. This had been the adult thing to do. 

* * *

 

The man had pushed her legs on his way to sit in front of her, a few stops after North City. The further south they went, the more people got in, but it still wasn’t enough to fill the entire train, so why was this man sitting right across her? Didn’t he have other seats to choose from where he wouldn’t have to ask for permission to sit?

Zinnia rolled her eyes, but she was reading, so she hoped he hadn’t seen. Plus, the windows were open and her hair, when left to its own devices like right now, did wonderfully at hiding her face when there was a breeze that scattered it as it pleased.

“So, where are you going?” asked the man in front of her, like he hadn’t gotten the whole point of her deliberately ignoring him. “ _I’m_ going to propose. That’s why I’m travelling. Came up north to work, but met my fiancée—or soon to be fiancée—” He laughed, like it was funny. “—down at Central years ago, where there’s actually people to fall in love with. Up north there’s so few eligible girls, gosh… Though people actually _like_ living here, I guess.” He sighed.

Zinnia was tempted to tell him that being so close to the regional border with Central didn’t count as _living north_ , but she knew better.

“I can’t wait to get there, though,” he kept going. He had a strange accent, posh. “D’you have any idea how long it will take to arrive?”

She shook her head without looking up at him.

“Well, I guess it depends on where you get off, I hadn’t thought of that.” He chuckled loudly.

Some people just did not understand that in public spaces it was polite and actually the common-sense thing to do to remain as quiet as possible. No, some people just acted like the entire world was their backyard and they could do what they wanted. What was worse, they didn’t once reflect on the fact that it _wasn’t._

“Anyhow, what brings you to Central? What’re you doing there?”

Zinnia kept her eyes on the notebook, turned the page slowly, then said, bored:

“Maybe I’m going to go get married as well.”

The man made a surprised little noise.

“Are you?” he asked. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Maybe it’s not a guy.”

Taken aback by her icy tone, he gulped, then kept on asking:

 “And where are you guys getting married? I hear spring’s a lovely time to officiate a ceremony. Mine’s in late summer, or … well, I hope it _will_ take place then.” He laughed again. “Gotta make sure the wife likes that too, but I really wouldn’t mind getting married anywhere, in any season. How ‘bout you? Have you talked to your lovely soon-to-be spouse yet?”

Zinnia slammed her notebook covers shut and shot an angry look at him from behind her bangs.

“I’m not getting married,” she said. “I just wanted you to shut up.”

Without blushing or even looking bashful for being called out like that, the man just smiled and scratched the back of his neck.

“Sorry, I’m nervous,” he said. “I talk when I’m nervous”

She didn’t say anything, leaned on her open palm, elbow on the window sill, and looked out at the moving world outdoors. The grass fields with cattle roaming among the thin stems, the occasional flower in the distance, bearing the colors of spring and summer. She was grateful she couldn’t smell it, the only thing coming to her nose was the odorous steam from the engines and the scent of the breeze.

“I can stop if you like,” the man added. “I think I brought a book too.”

She felt like groaning openly, to make her point clearer in case he hadn’t gotten it, and it didn’t look like he had.

“It’s fine,” she said instead, not bothering to look at him.

And apparently he finally got it with that. Sometimes indifference worked wonders. Only sometimes… Some other times, treating someone like you were perfectly okay with their abrasiveness turned out even better, even if it ended up prolonging the game. It proved that Zinnia would keep on standing her ground for as long as it took. It was a declaration of intentions.

This, though, this was bland and stupid and she didn’t want to prolong anything. It was already a long enough train ride on its own without an idiot talking to her like he’d met her somewhere cute. 

* * *

 

“Where are you going, then?” he asked, in a slightly less confident tone, a while later.

Zinnia sighed. Was there really an answer to that question that she would ever like?

She wasn’t going home. So she wouldn’t say that, in case saying it would make it true, would bind her to the family life forever.

She wasn’t just going anywhere either, she had a destination. This wasn’t roaming, not this time. But it wasn’t business. Family was not business, no matter how hard her mother had always tried to teach her otherwise.

“Back to the beginning…” she finally answered.

Back to the heat and the small-town life, only this town’s small life definitely wouldn’t be anything to get used to. She’d been born there, everybody would probably stop her on the way to her family home. She hadn’t stepped one foot there in five years. There’d never been any reason to.

Back to Anthony. Back to Dew’s shadow. Back to her mother’s glower.

The thing was, Anthony shouldn’t have told her about her father. But he had. Because Zinnia would’ve eaten him alive _on the phone_ if he’d only just left it at ‘it’s your dad’.

“He’s okay, it’s just…” he’d said right after, like that cancelled out the rest. Like being okay was a statement that just happened to follow the words ‘it’s your dad’. “You don’t have to really worry.”

“Don’t I?” Zinnia had snapped back at him. She’d gotten up from where she was sitting, unable to stay still. “I have to literally fucking coax it out of you to even hear about this! Yes, I do have to worry.” She had exhaled quickly. If she calmed down, would this become a two-way conversation or would he keep insisting that nothing was wrong while still asserting that it wasn’t not wrong either? “What’s happened to him? Why did nobody think to tell me before that _something_ was happening?”

_Don’t you know?_ A little voice inside her head had said. _Don’t you know already why they never call until it’s too late?_ But she did know. And it hurt that the main reason behind that wasn’t a desire to protect her or shield her from it, like her mother had taken to saying in the past.

“It’s a knee thing,” Anthony had kept going, sounding calm and yet probably sweating out of every pore in his body. He knew he’d made a mistake in both not mentioning it before and not going into detail now. “He just needs some help moving around, that’s why he’s staying back at the house more often.”

Zinnia had groaned loudly.

“When were you even _telling_ me? Please tell me you were going to, at least!”

For a few seconds he had been quiet and Zinnia had seen it coming. Of course she had.

“Your mom insisted,” he’d finally said, confirming what she’d more than just suspected. “I’m sorry.”

Zinnia had taken a deep breath, then another. If her father’s situation didn’t reach worrying levels yet, perhaps she’d be able to find something to solve this that wouldn’t follow her mother’s plan. A companion at day while her mother was working, perhaps some pills if there was any pain.

“I’m coming down there,” she’d stated. She had enough money for a train ride, enough money to pay for any medication and then come back here. Suddenly, Iver tugged at her heart strings like they were its only means of salvation. Like the town was drowning and needed a bendy wooden table to hang on to.

If she left, she’d be coming back, though. She’d just visit her family for a few days, fix whatever needed fixing, and ride back home. To her bookshop and her square and her poor writing and her soul-searching.

But apparently Anthony hadn’t thought that was a good idea, or even an idea to be had:

“Don’t! She’ll blame _me_.”

“She can blame whoever she damn well likes,” Zinnia’d spat. “I’m _coming_.”

If only she could get in touch with one of those knowledgeable doctors in the area, perhaps they would suggest some novel treatment for whatever was ailing her father, and this would just be a scare. A scare and the way to coerce her into going back to the old roots.

She could feel Anthony’s fear at her arrival, though. Being in touch with her mom, it came as no surprise that she’d been adamant on him keeping quiet about this. But she’d been a fool to.

Now he’d been trying to mend his mistake, just so he didn’t have to face Zinnia’s mother.

“There’s surgery,” he had said, his desperation almost palpable. He’d probably still thought he could convince Zinnia nothing was wrong. “She’s trying to get your dad to go through it first. We didn’t want to tell you anything till then.”

Till the poor man was about to breathe his last and there’d been no other choice because someone had to sign the papers to co-own the butchery.

“And has it worked?” Zinnia had asked. But she could tell the answer was ‘no’, anyway. Her father cowered away in the face of few things, but going to the doctor for more than a quick checkup was one of them.

“He doesn’t want it,” Anthony had replied. “Too expensive.”

But Zinnia knew it wasn’t just that. She knew why she hadn’t been told on top of all those excuses. Her mother had been waiting till the last possible moment, so Zinnia not only would come home but have to stay there to help with the butchery.

Why was it always the fucking butchery?

If she’d kept quiet about this until Zinnia’s dad was literally dying, Zinnia would have had no choice. She knew she would’ve gone there at the speed of light, and she knew very well, just like her mother did, that she would not have been able to leave again.

Family was family.

With a little luck, she could get on a train today, be there by late evening.

“I’ll bring money,” Zinnia had said. In her mind, she’d already been packing her few belongings again. “We’ll talk to a doctor or something and he’ll have the surgery.”

At this point, Anthony had no longer pretended to be in control of the situation.

“Zin, please,” he’d said, “it’s nothing. He’s fine.”

“No, he’s not fine!” Zinnia had shouted. “ _This_ isn’t fine.”

Keeping information from her, manipulating when and how she got hold of it… When Zinnia got there, things would change. She’d talk to whoever she had to, hire whoever she had to, work three jobs if that was what it came to.

“Your mom is going to kill me,” Anthony had complained.

“I don’t care! You should’ve told me sooner.”

And just like that, she hung up and started packing.

Anthony shouldn’t have been the one to tell her about her father. Now her mother was going to go ballistic on her. And the woman was almost certainly going to draw her card, because it was the last chance she’d ever have at it, but she was very wrong if she thought Zinnia wouldn’t fight back at this point.

She wanted to have arrived already, so she could figure out a way out of this, so she could leave again. Because, boy was she going to.

But… she thought sadly, perhaps she ought to make sure Iver and the life she’d slowly built up there would still be waiting for her at her return. 

* * *

 

_I will not go in,_ Olivier told herself. She’d been walking around for a while, not doing anything, just walking. Just repeating those words over and over. She would not go in, she had no reason to. It was late, the shop might probably, _surely_ , be closed, and she’d have walked for no reason—or worse, for one single reason she would not admit.

No. It would always be the nice weather, the fact that she didn’t feel like supervising half-built tanks or schedules, or the boredom that just seemed to come the second she realized she had paperwork to pay attention to.

_I will not go in,_ Olivier told herself. But there it was. The little sign with the name of the bookstore. It was here. Now she’d seen it, now she could go.

But she didn’t. Because in spite of the late hour, the door was open.

_I will not go in,_ she told herself, definitely getting in.

“Oh, hi,” Candie said. “How can I help?”

“I don’t need anything,” Olivier said at once. And it was the truth. Any interest she might have in this place had decreased after it’d become obvious that no library, bookstore, or private collection had books on what Olivier wanted.

Of course, she knew better than to make reference to any of that. As far as this lady in front of her was concerned, Olivier had very important business to conduct here once more.

“But,” she continued. Her ‘t’ came out too plosive, “the girl who works here had ordered something for me. I haven’t seen her lately.”

She hoped that was specific and innocuous enough to not get Candie to ask questions.

Candie didn’t. Candie _grinned._ She was up to date on the business Zinnia had in common with the Wall of Briggs, so she knew what this was about. And she found it endearing, to be honest. But she wouldn’t betray a friend’s trust, even when said friend didn’t happen to be present.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” Candie said. “And I don’t know anything about Zinnia either. She didn’t come in this morning.”

Olivier’s entire plan—slapdash and too quickly drafted—was demolished by that statement. She hadn’t been counting on that.

“Ah,” she said.

“I’ll go down to her house later, if I can. It’s so _unlike_ her to not have shown up… Would you like me to ask her about your order?” Candie asked, her eyes smiling just as much as her lips were.

“No, that’s alright,” Olivier said with a curt nod. She turned around to leave, back to the steamy heat of the mid-afternoon. “I’ll come another time.” Shit, that was becoming her fucking signature move whenever she came to this place, wasn’t it?

She’d enter the establishment, trying to look like she had no idea why she was there and yet trying to pass for the opposite, for a woman with a plan, and then she’d promptly take refuge in the fact that if things didn’t go her way, she could always just bolt and come when her nerves weren’t this shaky. Which they shouldn’t be, they had no reason _to_ be _._

One foot out, one foot still in, Olivier heard the little shop’s phone ring.

“Candie’s bookstore, what can I do for you?” Candie said, then immediately— “Zinnia, honey? Oh it’s you. I didn’t recognize your number. What happened to you, are you okay?”

Candie put her open palm on the phone’s speaker.

“General, she’s on, would you like to ask her personally about your… business, now?”

Olivier didn’t blush, and she would always feel eternally grateful for that. She just shook her head. But she didn’t say anything either, she just _stood_ there, hating herself for it.

“Oh, dear, of course, just take as many days off as you need, I’ll still be here waiting for you, huh? And don’t worry about me, you know we have one customer and a half.” Candie shot one very quick but very distinctive look at Olivier. “And take care of yourself!”

Not until Candie had hung up the phone did Olivier realize she _continued_ to just stand there, even after she’d heard what she’d come here to hear.

“Well, I suppose you _will_ have to come another time, General. I’m sorry.”

Olivier simply nodded, thanked her quietly, and left for real this time to return to her responsibilities. She was needed there, at least, even if it was just for approval of this thing and the other. Here, in this town, she was only a figure of some distant authority who now had nobody to deliberately intimidate.

But, as she rode back, she didn’t feel as exhilarated and alive as she’d definitely felt other days. Her chest didn’t flutter with feelings she didn’t want to process at the thought of reading a new paragraph from that flower girl, nor did she allow her brain to anticipate the words—all of them terrible and so on point she wanted to destroy them, yes, of course—that had been written there _for_ her, because there were none.

For the first time in two months, Olivier Armstrong had no piece of paper concealed in the folds of her uniform, and she would not bring it to her office later, while sipping bitter and terrible coffee, and read it until she knew it by heart.

Today she was just… back to her old winter self, the person she’d wanted to change back into since spring had fallen. She was, once again, impenetrable. 

* * *

 

Nobody was waiting for her when she got to the rustic platform. It’s not like she’d expected anyone to stand there, a cardboard sign with her name on it. Her friends loved her, her family loved her, but they all knew this wasn’t a happy reunion. This was work. Besides, she could damn well find her own way. How many years had it been? Not enough to erase the memory of these streets, slithering around till one swallowed the other.

The gravel under her soles cracked and popped, like popcorn. Even if the entire place vibrated with life, people coming and going, exchanging words here and there, Zinnia would only hear her own feet as they touched the ground, over and over. The distance from the small station covered enough to make her toes hurt already from the friction.

But it was a sweet pain. The pain of remembrance.

These people, once her neighbors, didn’t look at her twice. She smiled to herself at wrong she’d been to expect anything different. It was no wonder, really, that she didn’t get recognized. She’d had a few inches of hair trimmed off than she’d had in the past and her skin had grown even a darker shade of brown in the sun of the south.

But even so, the children playing in the street right outside of her parents’ house were the children of her childhood friends; the butchery a few streets farther down would surely be full of clients Zinnia would almost be able to name; these streets crawled with flashes of her adolescence, of the people she’d shared it with, sitting down in the shade, talking about nothing, wanting to talk about everything. And when night fell, if Zinnia looked up at the sky, she’d see the same stars she’d written about in her youth when she was in love. Those tiny spots of cosmic life—some of them long gone, consumed in the universe’s ice—might shine proud and distant, coated in arrogance, but they were beautiful. They were like love itself, a memory of it.

This town was just like them now. Faint ghosts of memory. Her past, not her present, never her future.

Zinnia didn’t have to get a key out to open the door. Because of the heat, a simple curtain was drawn between the interior of the house and the heat outside. She only had to grab the warm fabric, push it aside, and step in.

And something so simple took minutes. Her hand shook, then it didn’t, then she just pushed past the curtain into the past.

“Mr Erwin,” Anthony’s voice said then from the inside, “she’s here!” 

* * *

 

When she got through the main gate, she definitely wasn’t expecting this mayhem. Soldiers running in all directions, their voices loud. In no circumstances were they trained to behave like stray sheep in the middle of a valley at night. These men were trotting about like they had hungry wolves chasing after them.

“What the hell—?” she muttered to herself.

Someone came to her immediately, the bearer of news.

“The Mountain Men are back, sir.” Olivier knew that could not be good. They’d just left. “There’s been… well, they’re at the cells level.”

“Is any of them hurt?” she snapped. That’s what mattered the most. All of them safe and unhurt and back in the fort. Back with news, probably. Had Drachma finally taken the first step towards breaking the alliance?

“No, sir, it’s just…”

She pushed past them in a rush and stood in the center of the room. They were all going their own way, scattered like she wasn’t used to seeing them. If this had been an attack on Drachma’s part, they already had the upper hand.

“Stop squabbling about like hens and get your act together, men! To your posts—now!”

Until she had more information that was all she could say, and they listened. Not because her word was ultimate, but because she was speaking reason. Whatever had happened, being calm would always be the first step towards victory; it led to minds who weren’t panicking and could think clearly.

“I don’t see an army at our door yet, but if it comes, we will be ready,” she finished. It wasn’t an order, it was a fact.

After that, she quickly walked to the stairs and climbed down to the lower levels. They kept the cells near the boilers; the first men who’d built this wall had found that it made the prisoners mad—they almost always expected Briggs’ well-known frost, not the infuriating heat.

And what she found there she had never, not once, expected to find. Not so soon, not like this. Because it meant war was looming, breathing closer and closer at the back of her neck. If she pressed it, she’d be able to hear the thunderous roar of Drachma’s cannons being dragged across the dirt; the clash of swords, the smell of a thousand thousand men coming to get her.

The men in the room were dressed for the mountain, camouflaged in browns and greens and ready for most weather temperatures the Briggs range could throw at them. Only they were here, zippers down, hats down, jackets off.

They saluted upon her entrance, a row of tall bulky men, their backs to the bars of the cells.

“General,” they all echoed.

“I assume you’ve found something worth returning early for,” she said, frowning. What else, if no one was wounded?

“Yes sir,” they said, and they moved aside, letting her see into the cell. A woman sat inside one, hands tied, feet tied, dirty blonde hair down, covering her face. Olivier’s heart raced. “We found her on the trail near the border. She tried to escape, then she… took a few shots, when she saw she couldn’t lose us.”

Olivier took a good look at her men. Every single one that should have gone for the mountains was here, which meant there truly had been no wounded.

“You’re a terrible shot,” Olivier said, rising her voice so it would carry. Her men trembled slightly until they realized she was addressing the woman in the cell. “Forty men, and you didn’t even take one of them down?” She chuckled, emotionlessly. It was what bothered people more, that she acted like she didn’t give a shit. Sometimes she genuinely didn’t. “What were you planning to do once you infiltrated our country? Shooting us all?”

Olivier laughed again. No, that was never their plan. Their plan was to run back and forth, a mouse crossing the border with precious information to be exchanged. Like Olivier went around discussing her strategy with everyone in this fort. Like she didn’t know how easy it was to appropriate government secrets.

“Leave us,” she told her soldiers. They did so in silence. Forty men… all safe, all back. She’d have to make them return to the mountain, in case there were more lookouts out there. In case this was Drachma’s final declaration of war. Oh how long she’d been awaiting it… She could already smell the gunpowder, feel the red stains of blood in her uniform, in her skin. In her mind, she always pictured it as the blood of her enemies, never that of her allies.

She walked, tall and proud, towards the bars, where she stood a good few inches away from them. The other woman hadn’t moved at all, there was just a hint of a smirk on her face that Olivier wanted to punch into oblivion. It said ‘I am above you, and I will not give you the satisfaction of speaking back to you’.

Olivier would have none of that.

“Don’t bother, Drachman,” Olivier finally said, breaking the silence. “I know you understand me fine. And I know that spy tongue of yours can speak it just as well, so I don’t intend to play games with you. I’m sure you will soon appreciate that fact as well.” She crossed her arms behind her back, poised and regal. Unmovable. “Who sent you?”

The other woman’s smirk grew wider.

“You think nothing will happen to you here, don’t you? That because there’s still peace I won’t skin you alive until you tell me what I want to know?” Olivier continued, still under her calm facade. Then, in the brink of a moment, she grabbed at the iron bars with one hand so tightly she could feel its hardness underneath her glove. “You’re going to tell us everything in order to spare your pitiful little life,” Olivier yelled, her face an entirely different picture than two seconds ago. Didn’t Drachma want the Northern Wall of Briggs? Well, they were going to get it, and they would choke on it. “Or you’ll live so long and so painfully in your self-inflicted silence that you’ll only break it to _beg_ us to end your misery.” Olivier smiled evilly, uncurling her hand from around the bar and dusting it off on her uniform. Once again, she was calm; there was nothing to see here. “But that misery will never end.” Olivier leaned towards the woman, voice loud and clear, and what was worse: determined. “It will _never_ end.”

On her way out, she found her men still waiting there. She gave them another twenty-four hours to get ready for a new round-trip; she wanted every spy there could be hiding in the mountains behind bars, and these men would find them.

After that, she found Major Miles working in her office. She dropped down on the chair rather than sat.

“I want two men appointed in the cells at all times,” she said. “Day and night. How many shifts could you fit into the current schedule?

Miles frowned, twirling the pen in his hand.

“I’m not sure. Two, at best.”

Olivier shook her head.

“That’s not enough. There will be twelve.”

Miles nodded, doing a quick calculation, and got back to work, redoing all the current schedule to accommodate those extra shifts. Twenty men he’d have to cut off from their posts temporarily, until they got the information they all needed. By then, he’d probably need to literally reform the entire fort’s schedule to adapt to war anyway.

War was brewing. War had been brewing for as long as Fort Briggs had stood.

“General, sir…” he asked, “what do you plan to do with her?” There was no need to specify which ‘her’ he was making reference to.

With those shifts of men standing guard all day long, the prisoner could never get enough sleep if they woke her up right after their shifts had ended. And she would not be allowed to sleep during more than two shifts.

It would eat her alive from the inside.

“If she doesn’t talk soon,” Olivier replied bluntly, simply, “I’ll make her wish she was dead, but I’ll never offer her that chance.”

Miles just looked at her.

“Will that work?”

“I don’t know, Miles…” she said. It was the first spy she’d had in her hands in too long. They’d never had to deal with this in times of peace, fragile as that peace was. “But she won’t talk unless she’s forced to, that’s for certain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending notes: the scant world-building I’ve done on Drachma and the war between them and Amestris was inspired by [The Northern Theatre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9662246/chapters/21827606) by InkuisitivSkins


	12. Frustrate me; see what happens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Frustrate me; see what happens (aka Olivier doing Olivier things)_
> 
> (please don’t let me name chapters, I’m shit at it, also I think I’m funny but I’m not XD)

The house lay in almost permanent dimness, in contrast to the bothersome bright light coming in through the door. It smelled like old wood and varnish, like they’d painted the furniture in big quantities of the stuff to prolong its usefulness. None of that helped make it feel any less as if Zinnia had just walked in into an abandoned castle. She navigated her old childhood home, her fingers tracing the contour of the walls to find her way to her parents’ bedroom.

Her dad was happily sitting down at the desk, one leg bent uncomfortably.

She shot one quick look at Anthony, who was leaning on the doorframe, and sat down demurely on the bed.

“So, the knee, huh?” she told her father in low voice.

Her dad turned around on the chair to smile at her like nothing had happened and she was back from summer camp in the city. In a way, it was a little like that. She was _back._ And he hadn’t seen her in a very long time.

They both noticed now all the changes in each other’s faces. Zinnia saw more lines on her father’s than she remembered, and the stiffness in his leg worried her sick but she didn’t think she had a right to say anything. A wave of guilt hit her repeatedly during the two seconds it took for her dad to talk:

“Always knew whatever made me stay home longer than necessary would be something stupid.”

She shook her head.

“It’s not stupid. Just bad luck.”

“It’s not that big of a deal, anyway. It’ll get better on its own.”

“No, it _won’t_ ,” Zinnia said, louder than she’d meant to. “If you can’t stand, then you need help with it.”

In spite of her tone, her father just beamed at her. He looked… so lively, even now, after so long. Like he’d never lost that spark, that glow that burned brighter in the fog… Like he was still a young man.

“I’m fine, Zinnia, really. You didn’t need to come.”

She made a huge effort not to gasp. _Not you too_ … That was a low blow from everybody, but coming from him it felt like she’d gotten stabbed in the chest. They’d all spent years nagging at her to come for a visit, and now that she actually had left everything, she found out her timing hadn’t been exactly impeccable and that nobody wanted her there _yet._

“Well, I did. And you’re all going to have to deal with that. You wanted your little girl back once, right? Good, because now I _am_ here.”

Her father chuckled amiably, hoisted himself up from his chair as best he could and plopped down next to her, putting his hand on hers. Those were the hands of a butcher who’d lovingly given up on the profession to provide a home for his wife and child. “You’re too good, kid.”

Her eyes sought his, as much as it hurt her to. Those eyes were the same shade of red she hadn’t inherited, the last embers of a bloodline that now was more Amestrian than Ishvalan.

“Anthony told me there was surgery or something?” she asked.

Her dad shook his head. She knew how little fond he was of doctors and didn’t need more context. Even if she understood, it still made her angry. This wasn’t anything like the man who had raised her to rise over any obstacle in life.

“Okay, then what? Wait till it gets worse? Wait till you can’t really move?”

“It doesn’t matter much, does it? I’m out of the best years of my life.”

“You’re out of your mind, come on…”

She knew she was pushing into dangerous grounds, but she had to anyway. He was really ready to give up on better mobility just because he was scared and convinced old age had to be this way.

“The house has been a bit of a burden for a long time,” he told her, and his gaze was clean and honest, and it broke her heart. Why had no one reached her, asked for her help before? “This has nothing to do with it, although it helps…”

“It helps? How does it help? How could it possibly _help_?”

Now, of all times, her dad chose to look away.

“Making the decision to…” he muttered, “bring someone in.”

“I’ve been coming in from time to time, already,” Anthony said from the door. Zinnia flinched at the sound of his voice; she’d forgotten he was still there. How long had the fucker known about this, been helping at her own household? How long had he kept quiet about it just because he was terrified of an old woman with an impressive knife collection?

Zinnia held her father’s hand in hers.

“Dad, get the surgery,” she almost ordered. “I’ll pay for it, I brought money.”

He continued to avoid her gaze.

“You know I don’t like… doctors.”

“Neither do I. Neither does anybody. But if you need it—you _need_ it.”

He shrugged, like he’d heard that a thousand times from a thousand different people and no one had managed to convince him. As long as he could move around, more or less, and it didn’t hurt too much, why would he face his fears? Why would he move his ass? Sometimes he was too much like her, Zinnia thought. And in this case it wasn’t a good thing. He was running, just like she’d always done. Now, she had to become her own worst enemy to keep him from making the same mistakes she had.

“It doesn’t even hurt that much,” her father said. “I just… need some a little more help around the house, that’s all.”

Abandoning politeness for a moment, Zinnia spat back a reply:

“Get. The. Surgery.”

“Zinnia Erwin,” suddenly said a voice that Zinnia hadn’t allowed herself to think about in literal months. The doom it carried into the room settled into her heart like recently thawed ice. Now, she was truly back. “Don’t let me catch you speaking to your father like that.”

And just like that, silent and invisible like a shadow in the dark, Zinnia’s mother walked into the light of her own bedroom, apron splattered with blood and her hair wound in a tight bun, a few hairs stray from it.

Zinnia immediately sat up straighter and removed her hand from atop her father’s. Her mouth was a desert, her heart a horse in a race.

“Hello, mum.” 

* * *

 

It began gently, as gently as Olivier Armstrong was capable of bringing it on. A little under a thousand calories a day, no more than two full consecutive hours of sleep. Then, the lights.

Every afternoon without fail she would step down Briggs smelly dark stairs to the cell where Esfir was kept, and she would repeat the same questions. They were never uttered in anything but a calm reassured voice that’s confident will have answers in return, and they were never imposed on the spy more than three times.

Olivier would ask once, then wait patiently for a few seconds as Esfir glared at her and it became clear she would remain quiet. After that brief span of time had passed—more of a courtesy than anything else—, Olivier left the cell only to return to it a few minutes later, a flashlight tightly held in her hand.

She’d turn off the general light in the area and approach the woman in chains. Olivier always entered the cell, always left the door closed and locked behind her afterwards. Her men had asked if she wasn’t scared of getting hit and getting killed or having the detainee escape.

Olivier didn’t tell them that fear didn’t play into this scenario. Fear as a major emotion had been left behind the day she’d taken the train north. Emotions had been overtaken by duty.

If she was to get choked to death by a Drachman spy, fine. She’d make sure to coax some information out of her first.

She stood in the cell, towering over the silhouette of the blonde woman, and asked a second time.

“What did your country hope to accomplish sending you across the border?”

The spy chuckled and murmured things in Drachman.

Olivier stepped forward. The spy’s hands and feet were cuffed to the bench where she’d been allowed to sit. If she’d spoken, if she’d divulged her government’s secrets, Olivier would have been lenient, considering.

But Esfir spat at the general’s feet when she was done laughing, and Olivier approached her slowly, as if she was in no hurry at all. She’d been in a hurry for fifteen years, fifteen years of scars and overcomplicated plots, and radio silence.

Gradually, she pushed the spy’s head against the wall of the cell. It wasn’t done gently, but it wasn’t done harshly. Not yet.

Olivier forced the spy’s right eye open, earning a grunt in response, and clicked the flashlight on.

Esfir swore in Drachman, but Olivier didn’t even flinch at the sudden resistance, at the force the body under her hand was exerting just to have one eye closed and safe from the light.

Oh how the human body fought when in pain… and how the mind struggled not to scream, not to give up the last ounces of dignity that still remained.

Olivier asked a third time.

“What were your plans?”

The beam of light was pristine against the iris of the Drachma’s spy. It did not move an inch. Not when she fought again, not when she tried to bite Olivier’s fingers away from her face.

The Ice Queen pushed harder, but she didn’t ask a fourth time.

Esfir screamed. Olivier pushed.

When the screams got louder, the radio silence grew. This woman would not speak.

Olivier left without a warning, the same way she had arrived. She could come again in a few hours, with something else to play with, and she would ask the same questions she’d been asking for days: _who sent you, what was your plan, when is Drachma attacking_.

She left the lights off on her way out of the cells. The light would be harder on the spy’s eyes the next time they were on.

Buccaneer saluted her when she exited the room.

“Any improvements?” he asked, like he was asking for the weather forecast in the hopes that it wouldn’t rain.

“None.”

She began walking, clearly done with the conversation. She had the feeling that Buccaneer wanted to rub it in that if she’d sent him on that mission he would’ve brought back better information than Olivier could ever hope to get now.

“The girl will not talk, General,” he grumbled.

“She will.” _Eventually…_

“How can you know?”

She didn’t.

“Do you want to be in there with her any earlier than you have to?” Olivier snarled. She pointed at the men at the door of the cells. “Because I’m sure those two will appreciate having their shift split in three.”

Buccaneer’s face went entirely pale—paler than it already was.

“General—”

She could tell what he was going to say long before he thought to say it. She _was not_ giving up on this plan, even if she had to begin contemplating other alternatives.

“No. Shut up.”

He trotted along to catch up with her quick stride.

“We’re wasting resources, sir. Not to mention, hope. How many days has it been?”

“Not enough,” she insisted. “I will continue to do this until we get what we want.”

Buccaneer had to lean forward to speak to her, she was walking too fast, and she, tall as she was, remained a head shorter than him.

“If I may—and I know I may not but still—I think it would be wiser to just kill her off and send more parties to the border,” he said. “The men are ready, readier than ever. We know what to look for now.”

“This isn’t about us being ready or not. It’s about using the situation to our favor while we can.”

“We can’t torture her forever. She won’t share anything with us.”

“We’ll make her,” Olivier said. Not because she believed anymore at this point, but because she wanted to believe. “However, I _will_ fit more raids into the schedules. Talk to Miles about it.”

“Miles isn’t in charge,” Buccaneer said at once. Of course, he’d want to be involved even in that, not just budgets and organizing the material that the men would take to the border. “I just—not that kindness should be involved, but I figured we were smarter than this?”

“We?” she said, mockingly.

He rephrased it to get himself understood:

“Is there a plan B, in case the girl never talks?”

“Yes. Get back on track, with double the work force. If they sent one spy, they will send more, perhaps even a rescue party, when she doesn’t contact them back.”

Buccaneer frowned. They had a time limit to adhere to, then. If they didn’t get the information soon, Drachma would come banging at their doors with all the heavy machinery.

“You think they might have started to look for her now?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she added between her teeth: “If it were me up there, definitely.”

He patted her back with a thunderous chuckle. She glowered in return.

“Lucky you’re down here, then,” he said, and he meant it as a compliment.

She looked at him, acknowledging. Convincing herself she’d torture every bit of Drachma’s plan out of the spy was one thing, but actually believing herself capable of it was another. They needed to get moving _now_ , if this didn’t work.

“I’ll send more parties to the border,” she finally said, reconciling. “Regardless of whether she talks, we won’t let them have the upper hand.”

Buccaneer smiled. She could tell he thought this was the right thing. He approved of her strength, just like once he’d mocked her weakness.

From then on, Olivier joined the patrols. She joined the watches. She worked harder than anyone and pretended she wasn’t. She introduced methods of torture into her daily routine her younger self would’ve vomited at the sight of.

Esfir would not divulge one word of the plan, but Olivier did get her to swear and scream loudly in Drachman, over and over. She’d seen personally to having the spy’s hamstrings severed, on top of the blinding torture, the starvation, the sleep-deprivation, and the cuts. One for each time she wouldn’t answer. Olivier left the cell covered in blood every single time, and nodded at the doctor waiting outside of it so he’d get in and stop Esfir from dying prematurely. The walls, too, ended up inevitably covered in dark stains.

Olivier dutifully scrubbed her hands in the shower, after, to get the same dark stains off her skin, but she did not do so in guilt or remorse or even contemplation. Just routine: get clean to get messy again in a few hours. Work that wasn’t enjoyable was still work, and this definitely didn’t make it into the top 3 enjoyable activities she did around here, yet she delivered impeccably.

If the men at Briggs had ever thought they had reasons to be afraid of their commander, now she had proved them wrong. This would make for an absolute substitute to any pseudo-reason they’d had. Not many people were capable of torture, and these were honest men trained by the hardships of life to become good and obedient while retaining their own values. Olivier had not, ever, trained them in the art she saw performed every day. She hoped she would never have to.

They watched her out of the corner of their eyes, during patrols outside at night and when they had to share prisoner watch with her or wait outside the cell as they heard the spy beg for her life. And they watched Olivier in fear, not respect, not admiration. Perhaps this was how Briggs’ perfect order began to crumble, because of a general too brute for her men to ascertain her right to lead.

Strength above all was the Briggs way, but this didn’t constitute strength, this brought forth a deliberate abuse of it in order to remain strong, Olivier thought. Should she sacrifice what she’d believed in for years in favor of winning a war that hadn’t even started? She definitely meant to.

She’d been sent north as indirect punishment from her male superiors, and she’d stayed because Briggs had needed her sorely after she’d proved her value. The wall of Briggs had needed a head to operate its whole body. She was the wall, she couldn’t just… get rid of her only chance to be able to stealthily penetrate into foreign land.

She would just have to hope the men would see her reasoning behind this, for she couldn’t admit it to them out loud. And that’s why she worked harder than anyone in the fort. To prove that she hadn’t become a power-hungry enemy residing inside Briggs, that she was still the same, doing what she’d always done: making hard choices and putting them to practice if others couldn’t.

Miles found her one night when he’d just finished his patrol around the fort’s perimeter and he was ready to leave his things in her office and immediately move to the bunks to get a few hours’ sleep.

It was around 4 am, and the corridors were silent like graveyards, with the occasional creak from the pipes. These were the sounds that haunted everybody’s dreams and whispered lonely words in the night.

Olivier was well past staying up at that hour, even if she was stubborn about it. But when Miles was about to get the door pushed open, he heard her curse under her breath. Stubbornness had won this time, apparently.

At the image of him coming in, she shot him a quick look and then her face relaxed visibly. Had she been expecting a threat? Certainly, if the evil beyond Amestris ever reached Briggs, it would be General Armstrong they’d go for first.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said.

Miles nodded.

“Developments?”

“It’s all quiet out there,” he said.

She’d sent four parties into the range that very morning, following Buccaneer’s advice (who, as always, had remained at the fort). She had all her men working at full capacity, herself included. This would not be a sustainable situation in the long-run. And the fucking Drachman spy didn’t open her mouth for anything more than raw screaming that took both parties involved nowhere.

Olivier’s temples throbbed steadily, as they had for hours now.

Since she had nothing of interest to say, she just nodded and went back to working on the plans for the tank. They needed to get their hands on special antifreeze fuel for those, for when winter came, and she had no idea where they might be able to acquire it this time of year.

“I don’t mean to pry but…” Miles said. “It’s late.”

“Obviously.”

“I also don’t mean to sound rude but—”

She shot him a furious look.

“Miles, as much as I appreciate your continuous concern, I’m fine.”

“What time do you have to be down tomorrow?”

“Early,” she grumbled.

“I understand why all of this is necessary, but it’s been going on long enough that now it’s almost dangerous.”

She groaned, resigned to pay full attention to him.

“It’s four am. I’m going to need you to be much more specific.”

He gulped audibly.

“The pushing past limits. It’s dangerous.”

“The situation won’t last for much longer, I can assure you that. And, like you said, it is necessary.”

He put a hand on the table, on top of the tank stuff, to get her mind off of it. To get her to look at him.

“Sir, we’ll figure out how to get fuel for the tanks when the tanks are done,” he said firmly. “We have bigger problems to deal with.”

She stood slowly, putting her hands on the table too.

“We have _all_ to deal with.”

“Simultaneously,” he said, clearly judgmental of the concept.

“Indeed. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m done for tonight.”

Miles smiled. She was a tough nut to crack but he always got through, eventually. In most ways, his general acted like a cat that pretended not to be listening to you although they definitely were. Even if she listened just to get him out of her sight, it still worked for Miles.

“The problems will still be there in the morning,” he said, still grinning a little.

She stared at him. “So will I.”

Miles continued smiling, a curious gesture in a man of his stoicism and seriousness.

“Never doubted that, sir.”

“Do, and I’ll have disappointed you,” she said, right before bidding him goodnight.

It got on her nerves, how they acted around her in moments like this. She felt tempted to remind them how things were supposed to be, but she didn’t. At the end of the day, she was the first one to make sure they all got rest. It made sense, after so long, that the feeling was reciprocated to some extent.

Also, Miles had always been a little taken with her. That made her smirk to herself as she found her way back to her private bunk. There were only a few of those in the whole of Briggs, meant for the general in charge and the following ranks after her. Typically, none of those individual rooms would be occupied unless there came a senior officer, but she’d turned a blind eye and made a random selection and established a rotation. There were always empty beds in the common bunks so that in case someone of a higher rank ever visited Briggs the soldiers had somewhere to sleep while they vacated the rooms for the newcomers.

She hadn’t wanted a private room at first, and she certainly gave zero shits about using the communal bathrooms, but when she’d been appointed major general, the room came with the rank, and she’d accepted it out of honor for what she was going to do. Nobody had really cared much about that. They were all used to sharing sleeping spaces, either because they’d been at Briggs for years or because they were fresh out of the academy.

Truth was, she thought as she stripped herself out of the uniform quickly and got into bed, it was much easier to be an insomniac in an individual room than in one with fifty men snoring you didn’t want to accidentally wake up. 

* * *

 

With the passing of days, Zinnia lost weight. She was already stepping in for her mother and Anthony and her father. They all cooked side by side, preparing fish and salads and desserts that didn’t taste half as good as Iver’s to her, as she handed them kitchen utensils and ingredients, never actually cooking herself. She felt like a maid in a trial for a job, only this wasn’t exactly a test to see if she could do it; this was increasing the water temperature slowly so the frog in it wouldn’t leap away.

Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything specific. There had been no plea, no contract, just odd glances and the same severity under whose wings Zinnia had grown up.

She’d gone from supporting Zinnia’s claim of having her father go through the surgery to shrugging at the idea. And Zinnia had no idea what to do anymore. It felt like she was lost in the heart of a labyrinth with no real way out, and everybody kept telling her the same, that she shouldn’t have ventured into it unless asked to.

She wondered: _Well, then hurry it the fuck up, because I know you’re going to ask._

Anthony kept reminding her of that single fact, that coming all the way here had been a terrible mistake and that she’d eventually pay for it, if she wasn’t already. But his words were gentle and he never made it sound like an assault, even if it always was.

“If I have to hear the words ‘you shouldn’t have come’ one more time, I’m going to—” she was complaining to Anthony. Once again, they were having the same old conversation, and she was looking for loopholes in impossible places.

“You shouldn’t!” he told her.

They were both speaking quite loudly much too late into the night. But Zinnia didn’t have it in her now to tell him to lower his voice.

“Then why do I feel like I did?” she rebuked.

She walked through the dark corridor in her parents’ house towards her bedroom, and Anthony followed. Neither were trying to be quiet.

“Because you feel guilty. You always have. You run off without a heading, of course you feel guilty.” Zinnia’s feet stopped moving, her back turned to Anthony. She heard him open his mouth, then close it, like a fish gaping outside of the water. Who was he—who was _anyone—_ to psychoanalyze her? His hand found hers. Gently, he intertwined her fingers with his and spoke for the first time in a tone that matched the late hour. “Hey, I would too, I guess. I would have come back too.”

Zinnia turned around to face him.

“I know what she wants, Anthony,” she said. “We all know. Me, here. Me, here, at the precise moment.”

He shook his head.

“This isn’t the precise moment.”

“Like hell it is. I’ll go to Central, I’ll get the best doctors and I’ll just force him to go through with it. I’ll find my dad company and I’ll help my mother hire someone too, and it’ll all be alright.” _And then I’ll run as fast and as far as I’m desperate to right now._

Desperate times call for desperate measures. It didn’t get much more desperate than this.

“How much money are you earning up north?” he asked softly.

He was not moving, was he? He’d stand there looking at her like she’d just committed a crime without meaning to, and he wouldn’t let her pass until he knew she’d be fine.

“Enough,” she stated. If she said it like she meant it, it’d be closer to the truth than it really was.

But Anthony saw that truth in her eyes, gleaming. He didn’t seem to want to leave her hand alone, and she didn’t ask him to either.

“How much, Zin?” he whispered.

“They need help, and I’ll get it for them, alright?” she said, moving her hand away from his and heading back to her bedroom. Her footsteps were loud against the floor. “And then I’ll go and I’ll find another job and it’ll be fine.”

“Or… you could stay.”

She was glad he was right behind her so she couldn’t see his face when he’d said that.

“I’m not staying,” she muttered. “I’m not meant to stay.”

Zinnia had never known how true that was, but she felt this was pretty much as close as she’d ever get to it.

“You could… I don’t know, I don’t know, you could _try_.”

He let her walk away, then, and he followed.

When they finally got to her bedroom, they sat down on her bed where they’d also sat years ago, when they’d been young and foolish and life had offered them time to figure things out.

Now it was do or die, do or other people get hurt, don’t and you’ll regret it.

Zinnia didn’t turn on the lights. There was enough moonlight filtering in through the glass to read Anthony’s face like a book.

“Did you figure things out with that girl?” she asked, changing the subject. She didn’t feel like talking about running with the main interested party in never letting her run again.

“No. I told you, she didn’t love me back.” He sighed. “It’s a hard habit to break, apparently.”

At first, Zinnia couldn’t believe it was about that. But, then, of course, she realized part of Anthony’s ties to her _were_ and would always be about that.

She looked up at him and tried to maintain eye contact.

“I did break it,” she replied. “I broke it, and then I didn’t. And you keep getting the order wrong,” she muttered, incapable of looking at him anymore. She’d broken more than just Anthony’s old habits, she’d also inadvertently broken his heart and would continue to for as long as they both lived. Was it her fault, though? Did she have any agency at all? Could she really have nurtured her love for him longer than she had?

He let his orange hair  fall in his face, and spoke again, so she didn’t really have to answer her own questions.

“I know,” he said. “I’m… sorry. I should really go now.” Anthony kissed her forehead once he’d stood to his feet, towering over her. “I know you have to as well. I just—I keep wishing you didn’t.” He exhaled. “Does that make me selfish? I guess it does.”

“Well, me too,” she replied. “I leave because I want to. There’s nobody waiting for me over there.”

That, too, carried more truth than she was ready to accept.

_And the people here who waited all these years just did it out of self-interest,_ she thought, _like me._

Anthony smiled sadly at her, gently squeezing at her shoulder.

“Go to bed, Zin…” he mumbled. “It’s been a long couple of weeks.”

“Yeah. You too. And… thank you.”

Before he left, one hand on the door’s frame, he turned around and smiled at her.

“Anytime.”

Zinnia watched the empty space he’d left behind for a few seconds, then she forgave herself for the part she’d played in it, and she got under the thin covers.

Nobody was— _really_ —waiting for her there up north. Iver would always end up finding a replacement for her, Lynna could find another tenant, Candie would get by on her own like she always had. The north certainly wouldn’t miss a foreign flower from the south. 

* * *

 

Minutes passed, and the ceiling remained the same dull gray as ever. The windows at Briggs were so small and round barely any light came through at night, but that didn’t really matter. There would’ve had to be some movement outside in the valley, some car passing by—anything—for Olivier to have been soothed by it, as it had happened in her youth, in the buoyant activity of the capital.

She still remembered her sleepless nights at Central, and the quiet that was always eventually interrupted by a runaway car. She’d lived far enough from the center of the city that it was a bit of an event when her staring at the ceiling and walls became, for a few seconds, a show of lights.

Up here, you only had the silence to cling to, snores in the distance, maybe. She felt each and every one of those little sounds inside her, and they both lulled her to sleep and kept her alert.

Briggs had a spy in their midst. Incapacitated and half-blind and with more wounds already than Olivier could count. Two weeks had brought along too many cuts, too many unanswered questions.

Too many days that’d she’d only tasted the almost summer-like sun in the patrols around the wall’s perimeter.

Olivier sat up on the rigid mattress and looked up at the tiny patch of dark sky she had access to from there.

She would fall to pieces if she kept sleeping this little, working so hard. Where were those days when she’d been allowed to take a small break every day to feel the real northern sun on her face? They felt so distant, almost as much as her past in Central.

She kept herself from smiling in bitterness.

_How can you miss that? You have much better things to regret losing_ … she thought. Flashes of pinkish white and green grass and the smell of big cities came to her for a second, then… all she could taste in her mouth was the desserts down at Iver, the sun in her hair, and the main street, never as empty in her memory as it had been the last time she’d been there. _Will my absence be noted?_ She allowed herself to wonder, but she already knew the answer. If the flower girl was already back, she wouldn’t be missing Olivier, she’d be busy enough selling her stories again.

The sky was a beautiful shade of dark blue, almost purple at the edges. Dawn would break in a few hours, and Olivier would need to be up by then. Up, alert, and ready. Ready to slice her sword across Esfir’s skin once again.

Buccaneer’s words resounded in her mind again. This couldn’t go on much longer, no… 

* * *

 

Zinnia couldn’t sleep. Usually she was out in no time, but lately she’d been having trouble with it. Too much to do, no right way to do it, and people shouting at her that she was doing it all wrong anyway.

Her mother didn’t want her here now, but wouldn’t take too long to ask her to stay. Every doctor she’d consulted in town had said Zinnia’s father’s knee wasn’t in such a bad condition that would impair his life, even if he’d have some reduced mobility and would probably need help with the house chores. _Tell me something I don’t know,_ she’d thought.

Everybody had looked at Zinnia in that moment, and she’d wanted nothing more than to have the earth swallow her whole, leaving no trace behind of her existence.

Should she sacrifice her life, her aspirations, her fears, in order to save the family business from mediocrity?

“You know what’s at stake here, don’t you?” her mother had asked. She’d hugged her the minute she’d come in, but Zinnia felt in her heart that it wasn’t a welcome hug, it was a ‘thank you for staying’ hug coated in expectations, not wishes. “We wouldn’t survive on the butchery alone if I reduce my work hours.”

“No one’s asking you to,” Zinnia had said. “I can send money. And Anthony already said he’d help, didn’t he?”

Her mother had held her hands in hers.

“We’ll sort that out when it’s time. For now, I think your father’s fine enough to be like this. It’s what he wants.”

“Just because he’s terrified of a small operation?”

“It’s what he wants, I will respect that. I haven’t, not always, but I will now.”

_And how about what I want, mum? Does that even count?_ Zinnia had thought, but she already felt bad enough like this, she didn’t have to say it out loud.

“So?” Zinnia asked in the end.

“So we pull through.”

“And if he falls and breaks something?”

“It’s not going to happen. We’ll find someone to help us with the house.” Her mother’s smile had said it all. Zinnia had felt so small, so helpless. _Selfish_.

“Anthony,” she’d said, but her mother had shook her head.

“Not him. He’s already helped enough, he has a life.”

Her eyes had said ‘you, you will have to be here, pay us back for everything we’ve given you’. _But what about my life, mum?_ Zinnia had wondered. _What about all our lives?_

“In that case, I’ll talk to all my old friends, just in case.”

Her mother had made a small noise at ‘old’, and a face Zinnia did not like one bit.

“I saw that girl, Dew, in the butchery. She did _not_ ask about you.”

Zinnia had looked away. Kisses in the shade of the trees that never were, lies, breathlessness, words that had frozen a friendship that for a second could’ve become something else…

And her mother had just summarized it, cataloged it as ‘that girl’. Months of pining, months of ‘I love you’ that was never said out loud. Months of support Zinnia had sorely needed and asked for, and never truly gotten from her mother. _That girl…_

“No, she wouldn’t have…” Zinnia had muttered. The way things had ended, it was the best for all involved that life went on in silence. Dew hadn’t really looked in Zinnia’s direction in years, and now she went to her family’s butchery? Maybe her mother was lying. Maybe Dew was over it…

“If you keep running away, Zinnia—” Her mother always said her name like a command. “—it’s no wonder people do that. People forget, you know? Not everybody can wait for you forever.”

Zinnia hadn’t said anything to that. Her mother, of course, didn’t have the whole story, and never would. Zinnia hadn’t left Central because of a failed love story, she’d left because she couldn’t let failure and grief keep her anchored forever to a place she knew she didn’t belong in.

Her mother hadn’t asked her to stay yet, but Zinnia was already expecting the low blow to hit her. Her dad might not be in a terrible condition, and the circumstances weren’t what her mother had hoped they would be, yet it was still a fixed event. Nothing would change that woman’s mind. She would ask it of Zinnia.

And Zinnia needed to have a reply ready, just like she had with Anthony.

_I won’t stay. I want to go back to another place I might quit in a few months_ , she’d say if she had the guts.

She wondered, lying atop the covers in her bed because of the heat, if her mother would disown her after she said that. Probably not, someone would have to take care of the business after she and her husband were gone.

That only made Zinnia wish she _would_ be disowned, after all.

_How sad_ , she thought, sighing as she looked at the ghosts of the stars in the sky that the pollution kept better hidden than up north, _that my own family, who wants me to stay, can’t make me feel like they want me here for_ me _…_

How sad, indeed, that she also had no idea if she should stay and give up on herself for something bigger than her own life, or go back and pursue something she’d never be faster than.

Her rational mind knew staying to help was the right thing, but if she could help from afar, sending money every week or so and making sure her family was taken care of, why couldn’t she be allowed to go back to the mountains and the chilly air and the cattle and the terrible food and the soft smell of dusty books in the morning and the scent of the bakery in the main street and the sun bathing every bit of cobblestone and all that blue all around …?

She had to find someone to hire at home, and she had to do it fast. She would fall to pieces if the situation continued. This couldn’t go on much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Currently stuck writing Chapter 21 (a monster of a chapter, too long to edit at once) and giggling every time I work on previous chapters because I love these two women more than I even should and my own inside jokes still make me laugh.
> 
> Also, I'll be reaching 100k words in the draft soon and can you not feel my absolutely ridiculous excitement about it?? :D


	13. Bared to the bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting a bit ahead of schedule because I won't be able to on Thursday ^^

Strike. “You’re weak!” Strike. “And you’re—” Strike. “—soft! And that’s no way to win, Mauser.”

“Not expecting to win, General,” Mauser croaked with some effort.

She moved, not without certain velocity, but mostly with confidence she’d hit her target. Precision was not important as long as she had aim, and she did. By the bucket load. No matter how hard Mauser tried to hit her, she wasted minimal energy, jumping to the side and initiating her own attack before he could register her moving. She had already interiorized how much to use up and how to conserve the rest for the final blow. But today she seethed through her sword in a way that wasn’t common in her, as if the weapon had become a channel for her darkest, strongest emotions.

Mauser was only still standing because he feared that if he failed to protect himself against her, she’d decapitate him in a clean swift motion. Such was her usual level of containment that he didn’t understand how he’d ever been foolish enough to fear her before this particular training session. Today, the entire world would have bowed to her feet. And they would have been right to.

Her footwork, impeccable, made it seem as if she moved like a beam of light across the universe, her steel clacking against Mauser’s over and over. If she pushed a little harder, she’d succeed in throwing her opponent to the ground.

“Where’s your courage, soldier? Come at me!” she was shouting.

His hand shook holding the sword. Olivier clenched her teeth. She could’ve won this much sooner, but now was the right moment. She’d tired him out to the point that he would quit on his own in a few minutes if she let him.

Her own limbs hadn’t begun to tremble yet, and her breathing was regular, if a little heavy. Good to know she hadn’t lost that much practice in the years of abundant paperwork and little activity.

Taking a few steps back, she lifted her sword and waited for what would be his last attack. When it came, she only had to move elegantly to the side, slap his weapon out of the way with her own, and let him stare at her in disbelief, painting loudly.

Her chest rose fast and with ease. She felt full inside for a moment. Then she _remembered_ and her frown returned, and as did that ugly tension in her muscles that few things would ever manage to make disappear in its entirety.

She threw her long hair back, away from her face.

“It’s been an honor, as always, General,” Mauser panted.

“I’m hoping one day it won’t be,” she told him on her way out of the training room. He gaped at her, unsure of whether it’d been a compliment.

She’d been trying to teach him how to properly swordfight—the Armstrong way—for years now. The day he finally succeeded in beating her, then she’d consider it a true honor. For now, it was nothing but a waste of time, even if it was a waste of time she sorely needed.

There was _much_ to do.

She sat down at the bench near the communal showers after Mauser and her had fought. Getting some action, even if it was fabricated and deeply useless, felt better than standing in her office trying to find a way around things now that _things_ , properly, were over.

Olivier discharged her closed fist on the bench. She fractured the wood and looked at the cracks for a few moments, partly wishing to touch it with her fingertips and feel the pain as if it were hers.

She should’ve done the same thing with the spy’s bones, crack them one by one, question after question. Olivier should’ve brought hell down on the Drachman’s head, for all it was worth.

But no. She’d been lenient, and she’d measured her actions. And now all her chances at outsmarting the neighboring country lay in a slapdash ditch away from Briggs.

Too many days of uninterrupted agony, Olivier supposed. The human body would only last for so long, would only take the pain for so many nights.

On the fifteenth night, Olivier had paid a short visit, asked her three questions again, and dug her sword a little into the spy’s old wounds. This would have normally elicited at least a groan or two from the woman, but she had not moved. Her body was limp and cold against the wall. Olivier had knelt to check her pulse, and she did find it—weak and slow, but still there.

“Are you going to talk?” she’d said.

The Drachman woman had murmured some words Olivier didn’t catch. Her Drachman was limited, if anything. Besides, the words were uttered too close together and much too feebly for her to understand them.

“Are you _going to talk_ or not?” she’d repeated.

The spy had cracked a half-smile. Her breathing was… not regular.

For the first time in two weeks, English was what came out of her chapped lips:

“Now you’ll never know, Armstrong…” she’d whispered.

A minute later, the spy’s messy breathing had stopped.

And those scarce words she’d finally said were not nearly enough. It meant Drachma knew who Olivier was, but who didn’t? And it meant there _was_ a plan, didn’t it?

Olivier had spent the following hours drafting strategies over and over, circling new weak spots in the border, all of which she’d need to discuss with Miles in the morning.

She knew she should be considering spy programs at this point, too. But she couldn’t risk it. She wouldn’t send any of the veterans here, and she’d be a fool if she even thought of sending the newbies.

She’d come to the top levels of the wall, when dawn had broken, to feel like her body was still capable of progress. In any way, shape, or form. And training against Mauser never disappointed.

Now what? Now they had no leads. The same fog as always clouded the border, and the only thing they knew for sure was that Drachma was plotting something, just like them.

Olivier took off her black t-shirt and removed the binding underneath which she only wore for practicality during training, loose enough so it wouldn’t hurt to exercise in, and she crumbled it all in her hands. She took off her boots next, but she didn’t get rid of any more clothing. She just… stayed there for a little while, thinking things she wished she’d never have to say out loud. Nobody would have the stomach for them, not even those soldiers who’d been on raids with her, years ago when there was still an official war going on.

The few men who were walking in the showers to clean themselves up as well took one good look at her on that bench, half-naked and sitting like she’d accidentally gotten one half of the world killed in gunfire, and knew today was no time for the usual jokes. 

* * *

 

Zinnia slapped a few printed pieces of paper onto the table where her mother was finishing her breakfast.

“What’s this?” her mother said, looking up at her in mild disinterest.

“I found someone who’s willing to help you and dad. There’s his contact details.”

Ever since their last conversation, it’d taken Zinnia a little digging around and even more asking people directly, but she’d found a few candidates willing to work at the Erwin household for a medium pay—people who, like it’d been her case in Iver, needed a bit of stability to get going.

This one in particular was a forty-year-old man who worked near Anthony’s electricity tower. Zinnia had ever spoken with him, but he had kind eyes.

“This… costs money,” Zinnia’s mother said. “I hope you’re aware of that little fact.”

Zinnia nodded, perfectly calm. This was something objective, not a plan to be discussed, and she wouldn’t allow it to become so. Her bag was already packed in her room.

“I’ll be sending you all that I earn, so you can pay for this. I also paid to have dad signed up for surgery next Thursday. Central Hospital, the one for civilians.” For reason, that felt like an important enough thing to note. Her family had little contact with the medical world; she didn’t want them to accidentally go to the one that was military only.

“And all we need to know is in there, I imagine?” her mother said, pointing at the papers.

Zinnia crossed her arms over her chest.

“That knee won’t go untreated, not on my watch.”

Her mother scoffed. “It’s not your watch.”

“No, it’s yours. But you won’t bulge, so I’ll have to.”

“Zinnia…”

“ _No_ ,” Zinnia almost shouted. “I know what you want. I know it’s the right thing to do, to stay here and help while being _here._ ” Still trying to go for calm and collected didn’t seem to be working much. Her voice threatened to take over her self-control, it’d been breathed life on. She grew a size bigger every time she finished a sentence. “But I can’t play that game. I can’t play by your rules, and I would play by dad’s but I know all of his come down to fear.” She exhaled. “So I’ll play by mine.”

“What in the hell makes you think you can just ditch responsibility in this?” her mother spat back at her.

“The fact that we’re all grown!” Zinnia said. “The fact that you didn’t want to call unless it was to share terrible news! I left _five_ years ago. My name isn’t in the house’s deeds anymore, I’ll only inherit if you state it on a will, I _left._ And I’m only here because I refuse to have to _leave_ the way I left back then. And I _refuse_ to feel guilty about it.”

Her mother stared back at her for a few moments in which the only thing Zinnia could hear was her own heart pounding unceremoniously against her ribcage. Each beat carried a disproportionate weight of worry and stress. What if this went south and her mother acted on her authority? What, then?

“You’re a selfish little brat,” her mother said, seemingly less upset. But she definitely was not about to begin using motherly words. “You’ve always been. That man you’re abandoning raised you too soft, made you believe your rules are the only ones which prevail.”

“You’re wrong. He raised me as best he could. And here I am, moving things along. Can’t say the same for you.”

Deep down, Zinnia had interpreted things as being such for years. How much more obvious could something be that she’d continue to overlook it? Her father had done all the raising in the Erwin household, at least the most important parts of it. Zinnia’s mother, on the other hand, had provided money and stability, but never emotional comfort, she’d never laid the foundations for all the learning Zinnia would someday have to do on her own.

And, of course, Mrs Erwin didn’t want to face that truth. “You’re _running_. That’s what you’re doing.”

“ _This_ … isn’t _my_ home. You can’t force me to be here. I don’t want to!”

Her mother stood up with a loud thud to meet her eye.

“Oh come on, you’re behaving like a child,” she shouted.

One started letting their voice get shriller, wilder, and soon enough the two of them were participating in a verbal war no one could win. There always came a point when screaming didn’t mean you’d won, just that you’d made the other person lose interest in screaming back.

Zinnia took a deep breath. Her mother’s eyes were dark, like her own, but not a comforting shade. They oozed severity, and a lack of understanding that Zinnia wished she’d never mistaken for blind determination.

“Well, I’m not one. I love you two. I always will. But I won’t be a housemaid. And I will _not_ be a butcher. And I can do all that and still help, in my own way, in my own terms, and that’s what I’m going to do.” In spite of Zinnia’s efforts to speak clearly, it all came out at once, really fast, loud—a sign that this terrified her more than she’d been willing to admit.

But it wasn’t her mother that made her feel frightened. It was herself, her conflicts, her aspirations. Her doubts.

It was the fault of ‘ _what should I do_?’. A question without a right answer.

“Then what? You fix things here and you run away again? Do you think your father won’t miss you? Do you think that knee of his hurts worse than knowing his only daughter is gone?”

“Dad understands. I hoped you’d one day be able to as well, but maybe I was wrong.”

Mrs Erwin’s usually so stoic face, blotchy and red by now, suddenly lost all composure. A few tears adorned the bags under her eyes. “It’s your duty to be here! It’s your duty to stay with the family, to ensure the blood line goes on.”

“Blood line? _Blood line_ _?_ ” Zinnia shouted. Then she paused. That was the last straw. “I’m not grandchildren insurance, mum. I _left,_ and I’m _leaving_ again. And I’m sorry you can’t see why. It’s in your hands now, I’m done.”

She stormed out of the room and didn’t look back. In a few minutes, she’d be gone. And no matter what obscenities her mother meant for her to hear, Zinnia was done listening to what she should do coming from other people’s mouths.

On her way to her bedroom to grab her things and take off, though, she noticed her father was sitting on his bed, trying to get his socks in without bending too much.

Zinnia smiled to herself. He was always so careful with those, he always said he couldn’t walk happily if he knew one sock was mismatched or slightly off while his foot was in it.

The look he gave her when she got in, leaving her suitcase by the door, broke her heart.

“You heard, didn’t you?” she muttered.

His eyes weren’t just sad, she could’ve swallowed any hint of sadness, but they also shone with love. A love so deep Zinnia felt this was wrong, leaving him again was wrong.

“She misses you too, you know?” he reminded her.

“I know.” Zinnia said, sitting next to him. “But this was no way of showing it.”

“You really think she wanted to use all of this to get you back here?”

She shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter what I think.” With a sigh, she forced herself to smile. For him. “You’re getting that piece of bone over there healed up soon, _and_ I found a hard-working man a few streets back who’s going to help around here or at the shop.”

‘For him’ was such a wholesome reason to do things, if only it always worked. ‘For him’ meant he’d be the one to suffer less, not that he’d find the situation harder.

But it was, wasn’t it? There was never anything pleasant or nice in having to undergo surgery.

“Oh god…” he mumbled, closing his eyes.

“Dad, I know you’re scared, just…” Zinnia licked her lips, thinking as hard as she could. There would never be any words that would work. Honesty, perhaps, would neutralize his apprehension a little, but never enough. “Please. They’ll sedate you. You won’t feel a thing.”

When he opened his eyes again, they met hers. The wave of guilt returned to her.

“It will be worse after the sedation wears off.”

She felt tears threatening to come out and ruin her calm façade, but they never overspilled. She’d trained them well. They were still there, though, lurking in the corner of her eye, waiting for the right moment.

She said, almost too choked up to sound breathy:

“Oh, but you’re a tough man, aren’t you?”

“Life made me tough. Now I’m afraid I got soft.”

He smiled at her, and that was, without one single doubt, the most heart-wrenching second of her life—seeing those lips stretch until he was beaming at her, like when she used to complete all the tasks he told her to, or when she recited all the constellations to him after finding their names in a book. Only this was in no way an accomplishment he should be proud of.

Gently, he put an arm around her, and she put both her own around him.

“I miss you, Zin,” he said. “I never want you to forget that.”

“I won’t.” She kissed his cheek, wishing the tears away with all her might. She didn’t want to breathe, in case they escaped.

“But you have to run free. You’ve always been so good at that, I was always so proud…”

He began to tear up a little, the tears falling onto her dress. His voice was already a thread of both joy and the darkest of sorrows. When she’d left to explore the forest around their hometown, she always came back, her brown hair in the wind, with that beautiful shiny smile on her face that she always managed to share with him. She’d come to the butchery, sit down in a stool next to her dad, and he’d ruffle her hair and tell her to start putting together the story of her last adventure because he and the world couldn’t wait to hear. He’d made a writer out of her when she still was nothing but a scrawny kid with insatiable curiosity.

“I don’t know if I can be brave…” he admitted, a few seconds after.

“Seventy years without an injury or a cut to heal… damn you, dad. It’s not even dangerous surgery. And it won’t hurt, after that. I mean, only for a little while.”

“Pain doesn’t scare me.”

“Then what?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, curiously. “It’s just… like a tug, something tugging at me in the opposite direction.”

“Yeah…”

At this point, if he’d asked, Zinnia would have made the choice to stay. For him. But he loved her, and she knew he’d never ask it of her knowing how she felt about it.

God, that didn’t make it easier in the slightest. She appreciated her mother now, for that burning sincerity in wanting her there. Her father wouldn’t require anything of Zinnia, even when she was about to do the opposite thing she’d been telling him to. She was following the tug against wind and tide. How could she find the courage to convince him to do what she wasn’t able to?

“Sometimes you have to listen to that,” he said. “I like to.”

“Not this time.” She was about to play the most cowardly and desperate move of her life. She begged for heaven or whatever was next to forgive her for it. “Will you go? For me,” she said.

‘For him’ sometimes took the shape of ‘for me’. Because he loved her, because he wouldn’t ask her to stay, because he wouldn’t be able to let her go without reassuring her he’d be okay after.

“You won’t be there to hold my hand,” he said, as a sad realization, surprised.

“No, I’ll be somewhere far.” Zinnia had started to cry now too, in the most absolute of silence. A sob out of place would feel wrong, like she was the one being left behind. She felt so selfish, she _was_. But she held him tighter anyway. “Running free.”

“Send me a postcard, at least,” he sobbed clearly now. “I never get to see the places you see.”

If only she’d shown him before, the lands she’d set foot on, the people she’d met. People with red eyes like his in small little villages, fields covered in flowers that always made her sneeze, women so stern her stomach fluttered a little at first, ruins older than the country they rested in… So many thing her eyes had hovered over, and she only had words to show for it, never a picture.

“That, I can do,” she muttered, tears streaming. “And I’ll write you a story on the back.”

An image and a thousand words, both.

He finally unwrapped his arms from around hers and he gave her the sweetest, most loving glance he had in store, like when she’d been a little kid with pigtails and a smile that could have opened doorways into the universe. She was and she would always be her father’s only child, a child of his heart more than of his body. A child he’d always protect, even when he didn’t need to.

“I love you, my flower,” he said, and for once—just this once—Zinnia accepted it. She _would_ be a flower for her father.

“I love you too…” she mused.

“Now _run_. Run wild and free and run back if you ever get tired.”

She laughed wetly. “I will. Bye, dad.”

After that, she went back to her tiny room to take one last look at the place she hadn’t really called her own in so long. This was goodbye.

She might come back one day, but never on someone else’s terms. She made herself that promise.

Then, she all but ran to Anthony’s workplace near the electrical tower. His messy breaks were untraceable, but she might as well just try. If she got lucky, then it’d be one less race for public transport.

And she did. Anthony gave her a ride to the core of Amestris, and even though he wasn’t supposed to be _not_ working for that long (and despite her insistence), he parked and walked her to the ticket stand so she could get herself on a train.

Zinnia could have gone anywhere in the world, literally. She could cross the desert on her own, build up some more muscle, expand her lungs, learn to tolerate the heat. She could invade Drachma on her own, a single solitary soldier that reports back to nobody. She could travel past those countries surrounding her own. The entire planet was hers for the taking, and yet she felt there was only one place to return to, one place she’d been terrified to leave when she’d realized she might never be going back.

The man behind the glass pointed behind her at a train that had begun to steam a while ago.

“That’s yours, miss,” he told her. “Leaving in two minutes.”

Zinnia gave a tiny start, and grabbed hold of her suitcase.

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” she shouted at Anthony as she began to run so she could catch the train before it left. Her fingers caught a little when trying to get the door open, and for a second terror threatened to sink her stomach as well as her hope, but somewhere in the next heartbeat she’d pushed the heavy metal door open.

She made it, and once she’d taken a seat, she finally let all of her breath out, waved back at the silhouette of Anthony in the distance although he probably couldn’t see her.

And she felt freer than she ever had in a long time. She was going _home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [actual note on my manuscript]: "it’s funny bc this is called ‘bared to the bone’ only in honor of the one-paragraph moment in which Olivier will be wearing nothing on the upper half of her body. That’s it, that’s the note"
> 
> for once, I went with the canon trope of naming military officers after actual military weaponry and researched Mauser's name for aaaaages even though he's mentioned just a few times. word building is too fun sometimes to skip it :D
> 
> also, at first I was going to make Zin's dad be like sixty or so, but then I remembered that technically Buccaneer is sixty as well, and I had a bit of trouble imagining those two as being the same age, so... seventy it is XD. Having decided this, of course, led to creating a very unnecessary backstory that won't make it into the actual fic but that my Writer Brain finds very entertaining. so he had Zin at almost forty or so, did he marry Mrs Erwin before or after? is she of Ishvalan origin as well? why did he move to Central? did he move there in times of war or of peace? SO MANY QUESTIONS, Writer Brain!!


	14. When she loved me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's chapter is all about flashbacks :D
> 
> I love Dew and Ianthe so much, honestly, I need to write something with them as protagonists one day

She fell asleep on the train, drowned in memories of times long past and times so recent she had to close her eyes to keep at bay.

_That girl_ … her mother had said. _She did not ask about you…_

But the thing is… she’d used to.

_They used to ask about each other, if they didn’t coincide along the day. Dew would always come to Zinnia’s house and they’d both lie down on the wooden floors and take turns playing with the Erwins’ cat._

_Dew came and went like a ghost, but the impact she had on Zinnia’s life was a lot more tangible_ _. Little touches, words that could’ve dried up the entire ocean or refilled it with rose water, and all those hours spent at the line drawn between everything and nothing._

_Anthony always hated Zinnia a little for pursuing this, he was still hurting, mourning something she’d gotten over so much faster than him. Their friendship suffered during those times, but it never truly faded, even if it never healed either._

_To be honest, she forgot that he, along with the rest of the world, existed as long as Dew was around. Dew, who liked her but never in the right way, who never said a word about it until it’d been years and she was already off with someone else while Zinnia still counted the hours there were left until she’d be gifted with her presence again, until she had a chance to be the next item in her to-do list._

That girl _… Zinnia’s mother had said. She hadn’t been just any girl._

_“I was always a little in love with you,” Dew told her one day, sitting on the stone steps of someone else’s house. They didn’t care about that, then, excusing themselves on a youth that wasn’t theirs to live anymore. They were no longer teenagers who didn’t know any better._

_‘Was’, Dew had said. Never had a verb tense hurt more._

_Zinnia asked, more hopeful than she knew how to be: “And now?”_

_Now, Dew was dating someone else. Someone taller and better-looking who had known how to pursue her, how to show their love for her without hesitation. Someone who had come at the right time and had seen no reason why to wait._

_Dew shook her head softly. Now, Zinnia was a memory, a daydream of what could have been and never was. Perhaps, in the right light, if it was late enough, Zinnia could still be the spark that had never caught fire._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Hello, sorry. I’m sorrier,” Zinnia joked out of necessity. A soft exhale followed. “It’s okay, really. I never had any hope.”_

_Dew chuckled nervously. “You kind of did.”_

_“So you always knew, then?”_

_“No, I just—_ maybe _.” Dew looked away. Zinnia’s heart broke at the same time it pounded, because what was about to come next was something that should be uttered face-to-face, not in hiding. “Sometimes… sometimes I wish you’d spoken up about it sooner, so I could’ve—”_

_Zinnia understood at once, without need for more. ‘So I could’ve…’, there’d never been any possibility, never. Never any sign that this was even lightly reciprocated._

_And now it turned out it had been? And it’d failed because neither of them had told the other?_

_“How about you had spoken up sooner too? I wasn’t the only one with feelings!” she almost shouted. “You can’t just say it’s my fault and move on with your life like I’m not only now hearing about this!” Zinnia hid behind laughter, but it was not the honest kind._

_If Dew was allowed to conceal her face by looking away, so could she._

_“I didn’t say that,” Dew said, calmly. She was always the calm one, appealing to rationale and facts and never doing introspective work to realize her truth wasn’t universal. “But… it’s true. You were the one… you were always the one to flirt openly and hug me for minutes and… and… I don’t know, Zinnia.” For a second or two, their eyes did meet now. “I waited. I waited because I thought you were going to tell me.”_

_“So when I didn’t you just, what, decided you wouldn’t either?”_

_“I didn’t know what to do!” Dew cried out._

_“Me neither.” Zinnia’s words sounded like an ultimatum. “But now I do.”_

_She stood up, looked at the woman she had loved longer than she could remember, and began walking away._

_“Where are you going?” Dew asked, probably confused and feeling sorry. That had never been addressed till then, the confusion. And if it ever was to its fullest extent, it’d be hard on them both. Maybe that’s why they’d never dealt with it._

_“To take a walk,” Zinnia replied. She turned around. She would look into Dew’s eyes one more time, to say this and let her know she meant it: “I’m sorry, I just… I know you don’t feel the same, but I still love you, okay? And it hurts. And for now I think I need to let it hurt a little.”_

_Then Zinnia walked away, never meaning it to be a permanent retreat, but it seemed that was how Dew had understood it. And after that, well, it had been hell. Silence and avoiding each other’s eyes. A friendship that already was and something else that could have been, all broken beyond repair because no matter their age, they’d never grown out of the small town life that had made children out of them for years._

Zinnia was waken up by the sun, irritatingly bright against her closed eye lids. Around the moving train, a sea of grass spread towards the horizon, so they must still have been in the Central Area.

It’d been years since she’d… given a thought—a real one—to what had happened. It no longer hurt like a fresh jellyfish sting but… Zinnia still remembered the pain. Loving without being loved was terrible on its own, but finding out that there had been a very specific moment during which it would have been mutual loving the very day you also find out the other person blames you for it never happening… Zinnia had wanted to run that day, and she would have had no problem in admitting to it that time.

She wondered, was coming back to Iver the same as taking that walk? Was she just putting distance between herself and reality because it hurt too much? Or was this instinctual? Did she really have such important ties to the north to return there? Or did she just… want the illusion of being away? Would she want to run away from there too as soon as she arrived?

She arrived, and she went straight to Candie, who hugged her like a mother should hug a child and told her she’d pay her for the days she’d been away, in spite of Zinnia’s insistence.

Then, the older woman smirked at her.

“Your general came by some time ago, asking about you,” she said.

Zinnia immediately wished the earth to swallow her whole and leave no trails behind of her disappearance.

“She’s nothing of mine,” Zinnia grumbled. “If anything, the client that’s always assigned to me because _someone_ likes to play really mysterious games.”

Candie laughed and patted her shoulder.

“Welcome back, kid.”

Then Zinnia visited every shop in the main street, one by one. A single job wouldn’t pay for every single thing Zinnia needed money for now. And she was intent on delivering, every week on the dot, to shut her mother up. Selfish? Very. But she was free now and they’d be okay again.

_Watch me rise above your expectations,_ that embodied her mood about it. She would not only rise above them, but thrive once she had.

The baker took her in the afternoons. She forgot for a moment where she was and almost began tearing up as soon as the man had said the word. He laughed, as it could have gone no other way. And she reminded herself that’s how things worked around here. Strength prevailed, the weak paved the roads for everybody else to walk on. Tears of joy weren’t all that common, after all.

If only she could trust them with the little fact that saved her from being weak… Back in Central, she’d wanted to cry so often that not having shed a tear out of place made her the strongest of them all.

She spent the few first hours back in Iver talking to Candie, then she donned an apron and went to her new job. After a few minutes of training on how to make bread and use the several gadgets in the place, Zinnia resigned herself to leaving every evening smelling like flour and cake frosting.

That would be the price for freedom. And as such, she’d pay it gladly.

Much to her surprise, that price was to be soon increased.

The day after being back, Zinnia realized she was back _at full speed._ To take life by the horns. And so it succinctly happened.

Olivier Armstrong walked in, and Zinnia almost didn’t recognize her. She’d known the woman was ferocious for months now, and she was accustomed to displays of power, which were pretty lowkey even then. The woman who made for the counter that afternoon broke every single measurement Zinnia had ever made of her.

Breaths were held when both their gazes locked. Zinnia was painfully aware that she had flour in her hair and was wearing an apron as unpleasant to the eye as Southy’s teeth.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Olivier’s smile was the widest Zinnia had ever seen it, and she didn’t trust it. “What? Did selling old books not pay off?”

Zinnia tightened her jaw and when she felt the temptation to do something very dishonorable, she tightened her fists as well.

“My family needs me to send them more money, that’s all.”

“Still living in the shadow of mum and dad?” Olivier said. She meant it as a joke, nothing meant to truly harm or even upset. Gods knew she was practically clapping with her ears right now. Two weeks gone, with all the absolute bullshit that had gone on meanwhile, and now the flower girl was back.

Zinnia glowered at her.

“My father is sick, they need the money,” she said simply, bitterly. No more information was required of her, so she didn’t give it.

“Oh.” Olivier’s throat and probably lungs too went completely dry. Even in this sun, that was unlikely.

Zinnia frowned.

“Now, do you actually want anything or do you just approach everyone in town without a real purpose because you’re bored?” Today she didn’t want to be toyed with. Or to play the game itself either. Today she wanted to be left alone, and she thought she was going to manage it in the end, but no. The fucking idiot in charge just had to come and ruin it, making her feel like a little girl.

That fact burned uncomfortably in Zinnia’s stomach. She hadn’t really _processed_ the fact, earlier in the train, that coming back didn’t just mean freedom and a house to herself and not answering to people, but also _this woman getting a say because that’s just how Zinnia had learned things were like in the north._

Because she hadn’t come here to argue, Olivier told Zinnia what she wanted, since the baker was nowhere in sight (probably at the back preparing more produce), and she left with a curt nod to sit in the sun, legs crossed under the table in that particular manner of hers. Ankle on the other knee.

Blue…

“Zinnia! Get the canopy down a little, it’s hot outside!” said her boss, interrupting her thought.

And with a grumble and a sigh, Zinnia walked outside to actually do as she was told.

_Don’t look, Zin. Just keep on walking,_ she thought. _Walk straight and don’t look at her._

But when Olivier’s hand wrapped—gently, truth be hold—around Zinnia’s hand, she stopped on her way, forgetting how ‘straight’ she was supposed to be standing right now.

“I apologize. About your father,” Olivier said. Not usual in her, but when it was earned, she would yield. Then— “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

At first, Zinnia couldn’t help but glaring. The lack of opposition in the other woman’s eyes destabilized her a little. Normally, there’d be an entire army in them ready to fight at the slightest provocation.

“Thank you,” she said simply, more in the vein of a hiss than anything else, but Olivier didn’t comment on it.

As Zinnia pulled down the canopy, Olivier spoke again:

“Will you be in the same place as always,” she asked, “now that you’re back?”

It was out there, so Olivier would honor her words and not take them back unless asked to. That doubt had corrupted her soul in the past few days, between the sleepless nights and the stress of having to torture someone for information. Better to have expressed it in a more or less correct way, if a little _intense,_ than to go on making even more of an asshole out of herself with stupid remarks.

“I’m not going to write anymore,” Zinnia replied dryly, arms crossed tightly over her stomach. “So don’t worry, you won’t have to bother and personally check on what I do or don’t do anymore.” Her eyes met the general’s in the distance. “If that’s what you were even doing in the first place.”

_Bold. Fucking bold move, Zin._ One of the boldest of her life, and it was as if it hadn’t been. Olivier was still staring at her curiously, and … respectfully, strange as that was. She’d been away for two weeks, maybe just Zinnia had lost practice at reading Olivier’s expressions.

Calmly, the general uncrossed her legs and replied with something that her own heart—now pounding happily—classified as bold too:

“Maybe I like what you wrote.”

Maybe she did. She hadn’t really stopped to think of it as such before. She kept the things, mostly because they were trophies, nothing more. If they’d been mere banners she’d won, she would have made them public, probably roasted Zinnia’s naïve thoughts with the rest of her men.

Maybe she _liked_ those writings. They weren’t specially good, or poetic, or artistic—not that Olivier was that much caught up with art these days—but they were brutally honest. And that, she was fluent in.

Maybe Olivier hadn’t thrown them away yet because she liked seeing herself through foreign eyes, the eyes of a girl who reeked of cities and wealthier lives than the north could offer her. She liked what that girl saw: the mountain, the much feared general, the impenetrable wall that kept so many away and always would… but also, in a way, Zinnia had managed to see the woman. Not the heir to a rich family, not the soldier who’d climbed up the ranks on merit alone, not even her natural leadership capabilities. No, Zinnia had seen the simplicity of the person beneath all that. Zinnia had seen the puzzle and broken it apart to dissect it, then hand over the results of her observations to the object of them. And maybe the flower girl wasn’t even aware of what she’d done?

Maybe. Did it have to be about liking them at all?

“ _Maybe_ you just wanted to see me burn at the stake or something.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t burn people alive.”

“No,” Zinnia spat. “You do worse things.”

“Yes, I do,” Olivier admitted softly. Because it was true. Because she had done much more terrible things in order to get what she wanted, and she hadn’t even succeeded in the first place.

“So,” Zinnia exhaled. “Like I said. I release you from your duty. Or whatever…” And she went back inside to work, clearly signaling that the conversation was over.

Olivier stayed for a couple more minutes, left the usual money aside to pay for her food, and took off. Also contrary to popular belief, she knew how to take a ‘no’ for an answer. 

* * *

 

Drachma, patrols, shortage of men, the tank, alkahestry, war. All pieces of the same puzzle. And all just amounted to the same things: uncertainty and long headache-inducing hours sitting on the same spot. What needed to be done brought along the greatest discomfort of not wanting to remain sitting down for a prolonged amount of time at the time that she wanted to be doing something else, something _active._

What needed to be done was honorable, but infuriating because of the scarce advancements. The Drachman spy was dead and had died the same way she’d lived, quietly; no patrol ever saw any sign of the enemy at all; and because of the war mentality that had invaded the fort, every man on Briggs was working double shifts. If the Drachman had sent spies, they weren’t just on the lookout anymore, if they’d ever truly been.

The border didn’t rest.

But Olivier had to. Appealing to her human condition, and because of Miles’ insistence, she sometimes stopped working. And she read.

She hadn’t read for pleasure in years.

And she read the only thing she shouldn’t. She read about herself, through the eyes of the person that by now Olivier had accepted would never write this kind of text again.

And as she read, the strings of adjectives used to refer to herself led her mind away from the present into the crazy turmoil of her own memories and thoughts. Her plans to attack, all of them failures.

She couldn’t help but think them over time and time again. The patrols would report if something came up in the border, and eventually Central would send in more soldiers, fresh out of the academy, so the shortage wouldn’t remain a problem for too long. But… alkahestry?

Without books, she had little chance. She thought she’d accepted so as well. But she kept exploring the idea in her head that she might contact Ianthe’s family, because other than that she had no clue how to get in touch with anyone of Xingese origin. As far as she knew, there were no officers from Xing in the military, and if there were currently any envoys from the country in the east, Olivier had no way to find out.

And what she remembered about it was insufficient. Just like what Ianthe had known herself. Maybe, Olivier thought, this was why she hadn’t contacted her in all these years. She had no use left for their relationship now that the bittersweet end of it had turned fifteen years old this year, and if she went back to Ianthe she’d never find forgiveness for protecting her by taking off to the north. She doubted she’d even be able to admit to that.

_They’d hidden away in Olivier’s room from the superficial life at the Armstrong mansion. Ianthe’s face had lit up when she’d come in for the first time; they always went to her place instead, less scrutiny, more normalcy. They both felt right at home there._

_But this room they were in was as big as Ianthe’s house, without the garden. It felt like walking into the room of a queen._

_Once Olivier had gotten her past the initial astonishment, Ianthe had gone back to her usual levels of energy. She was no longer just big eyes ogling everything with insatiable curiosity, but all mouth, and all attitude. She was so loud, god… Olivier loved it. Loud and unapologetic. But this was her place, and everything needed to be quiet because otherwise it disrupted the royal aura._

_She’d pay for it later, when Ianthe left. But for now she might as well just grab onto it. She’d deal with her parents after._

_She and Ianthe talked about alkahestry again. Because Olivier hadn’t been quite content with the ‘abstract’ concept of it. ‘Abstract’ was a hard idea to grapple. It wasn’t like love. Love could be held, physically, if not in its entirety at least in some ways. Hugs, kisses, company. Sometimes those things were real expressions and manifestations of love. But alkahestry for now hadn’t been proven to be able to do the same, like alchemy did._

_And the name it had to try and describe what it could do didn’t really clear anything up._

_“The pulse of the dragon?” Olivier had said. “That sounds like one of those games kids play.” She’d been thinking of those old card games people had played in the streets when she got out of class._

_Ianthe supported her weight on her elbow to look at Olivier right in the eye._

_“Don’t mock it!”_

_Olivier held her gaze, then looked away._

_“Sorry.”_

_“I’m serious. Would you stand by if someone spoke evil of the military?”_

_“Maybe.”_

_Ianthe laughed. “We all know how big of a lie that is.” Then she scoffed. “I can’t believe I’m in love with a soldier.”_

_“I’m not a soldier yet.” Olivier pointed out. She was going to be so, soon. Very soon. She was a girl in a world full of men, but in spite of everything unpleasant that came with it, she’d risen to the top of her class. And if she kept working at this pace, she’d graduate early. And she’d leave Central for once and for all._

_She looked at Ianthe, longingly. What would she do about this when she was assigned to some distant headquarters somewhere? Ianthe wouldn’t come with her, would she?_

_Ianthe cupped her chin. She had short fingers, but she knew how to use them. One single touch from them and Olivier’s skin felt a thousand times more sensitive than normal._

_“You are and you’ll always be,” Ianthe said. “And I haven’t always liked it but it’s a part of you I can’t just ignore. But_ I’m _Xingese, and I will always be, so you shut up about cultures you don’t know and listen before you judge, okay?”_

_“Okay.” Serious, Olivier leaned towards Ianthe’s touch, like she was about to rise._

_“You are a good soldier, Ms Armstrong,” she said. “Very good, indeed.” Her eyes were green and full of love, but also full of stories that needed to be heard. “But you need to learn some things.”_

_“Tell me more about it, I do want to learn.” Olivier always wanted to learn more, about everything. That trait had remained with her for many years after this. New information, though, had ended up becoming a weapon, not a step towards more introspective work._

_Ianthe shrugged and lay back on the mattress._

_“There’s not that much to tell. It’s, I don’t know, common knowledge. People are taught about the art of alkahestry, like alchemists here, I guess. But to most people it’s just a general belief, kind of like a faith?” She smiled. It was better than faith. “Does that make sense? Instead of believing the earth moves itself, they believe in the flow of life.”_

_“And what do you believe in?”_

_Another shrug. Ianthe’s denim straps always fell from her shoulders, her overalls were too big for her, yet she filled rooms with just her presence. Her words, after that, gave rooms light._

_“I believe a little. My plants… they’re alive, just like us. I can feel that, sometimes, more than just believe it.”_

_Her little garden back at home was Ianthe’s pride and joy, Olivier knew. She had a connection to those plants, a pure stream of love that didn’t require reciprocity._

_“And you? What does someone like you believe in?” Ianthe laughed at the thought. Olivier didn’t look like the kind of person who devoted herself to a faith, or a superior being. “Alchemy?”_

_Olivier wrinkled her nose, remembering Alex. The things coming out of the ground and the little blue sparks and the circles with annotations she didn’t understand. Their mother had wrinkled her nose at it, but she’d encouraged it all the same. A soldier and an alchemist, her boy had prospects. Olivier, though, was just a rich girl in men’s clothes to her._

_“I’ve never believed in alchemy. I believe in what I can see with my two own eyes.”_

_“That’s the soldier speaking.”_

_Olivier thought about it. “Maybe so.”_

_“Widen those horizons, huh? There is so, so much more out there than meets the eye.”_

_It’s not like Olivier saw many horizons right now, she saw the walls around them. And she felt the softness, the thickness of the mattress under them. And she heard the house breathe in expectation._

_She pulled one of those big smirks she knew made Ianthe smile right back, tough as she was._

_“You’ve gone all Xingese on me.”_

_Immediately, Ianthe sat on the bed, moved like a resort._ Loud, unapologetic. _Olivier bit her lip._

_“I swear to fucking god, Armstrong! Stop it with that, eh? It’s not funny. It’s racist.”_

_“It is. I’m sorry,” Olivier said, very serious because it had been definitely not the right thing to say. Maybe she shouldn’t say those things, why did she even feel the compulsion to anyway? Surely not all Xingese people spoke like philosophers, so… then why?_

_This was what Ianthe was asking her to learn, she’d learn it. She’d build a better world out of her own mistakes. One day, she’d travel back to Xing with Ianthe, they’d go over there like two queens, and silently Olivier would apologize to the land she’d mocked._

_Then, she rested on her side and looked at Ianthe, reaching out to touch her face. Round and soft-skinned and pale. “And I will be stopping right away in favor of…” She moved a little closer, breathing close to Ianthe’s ear.” … much more entertaining activities.”_

_“Sometimes I hate you so so much, woman…” Ianthe mumbled, closing her eyes._

_Olivier stopped for a second. “Do you, though?”_

_Ianthe sighed and pulled her closer. “Stop being so damn Amestrian and maybe I will hate you less.”_

_Olivier laughed out loud._

_“Fair enough,” she said._

_And the kiss that followed was her first silent apology. The first of many._

Olivier would have liked to think she’d become less Amestrian after all those years, more tolerant, more willing to listen and withhold judgment, but that was not what the flower girl’s words let through.

She sighed.

The honesty in those words equaled their lack of awareness.

Being called things she’d been hearing for years was no shock. The adjectives rolled right off her, and some of them she took great pride in. But being observed and being given some benefit of the doubt was extraordinary. And it made her feel like a child again, like the child she might’ve been if she’d been born up here in a normal family.

But it was also a reminder. Of what she should continue to be. The string of adjectives, the Northern Wall of Briggs. Work, research, lead. This small break shouldn’t have been allowed. Nor this self-indulgence of a life she’d been occasionally living.

_Sometimes I wonder who she is, what she does. A general orders. A woman normally follows. It’s refreshing to see that turned around, but that is all that meets the eye. Is there more to know?, I wonder sometimes. Is there someone beneath all that military blue? Someone worth knowing? I wonder…_

Olivier sighed. She had answers to those questions, so similar and yet so different. Who she was, that was inseparable from the façade people saw. She was a general, and a woman general at that, with all the hard work and discrimination it entailed. But that was one level of many. She found it immature of Zinnia to think this way. Of course there _was_ someone under all that blue. But if that someone would be worth getting to know… that depended entirely on her, not Olivier. And by the looks of it, Zinnia didn’t appear to be interested anymore.

And that ‘anymore’, a small and insignificant word in the order of things, felt like a tiny thorn against Olivier’s sternum.

A sudden but soft knock on the door brought her back to the reality she’d been trying to forget for a while. Olivier could tell it was Miles before he walked in. He’d been on the last patrol, and even if he didn’t come with news, he always came anyway and sat with her, working side by side because that made the silence less unbearable.

But this time, upon getting into the room, Miles’ eyes were very obviously directed at the pile of pieces of paper Olivier had been… reading. His face immediately got all red, and she noticed how big of an effort he was making not to laugh. Maybe that was why his skin now looked like the outside of a ripe apple.

“What’s so fucking funny?” she said, not bothering to be polite. If he saw, he saw. There were so very few conclusions he could come to, and yet… why would she mind? What could he say she hadn’t thought to herself already?

“Nothing, I just…” Miles actually grinned. Like a child. He then passed a hand over the back of his neck. “Glad to see you _not_ working.”

“I was about to get to that now, sorry to disappoint,” she said. In fact, work could wait. But if she didn’t start immediately, he’d ask questions. It was odd enough he hadn’t directed a few at her already. “How was it?”

He sat down and sighed, taking off his coat. In this weather, it was warmer inside Briggs than on the outdoors. A fort had no breeze.

“Quiet. Deadly quiet. I would’ve expected a few men at the border, at least. But no one’s come looking for the … body.”

They’d buried the spy on the right side of the border, but hadn’t taken too many precautions to hide the slapdash grave. If the Drachman found it, all the better for them.

“We’ll need to be vigilant. They might send more numbers. Or—” Olivier laughed softly. “—they might just go ahead and declare war.”

“If they haven’t already, I don’t think they will soon,” Miles said, shaking his head. “Whatever they’re waiting for, it’s not time yet.”

But who knew what they were waiting for? They were just playing the same cat-and-mouse game as ever. And the only way to get ahead of them was keep eyes on the border at all times.

“In any case,” she said, “we’ll continue as always. Eventually something will come up.”

Miles smiled faintly.

“Buccaneer’s waiting for it like there’s no tomorrow,” he said. “Did you talk to him again?”

Olivier chuckled again. “No. Why? Did _you_?”

Of course, she imagined what he meant by mentioning Buccaneer. And she wondered if she should tell him about her plans for the captain.

“It’s not my place, sir.”

Olivier sighed.

“I told him he was to retire next year.” Her voice wasn’t nearly as thunderous as usual. This was no small matter. As far as she’d noticed, Miles and Buccaneer were as close as Briggs would allow two friends to get. And she’d never gotten a chance at asking him what he thought about this.

But Miles just guffawed. Olivier imagined the mental image of Buccaneer’s face when he’d been told his days in the military were over had been enough for Miles’ formality to just drop, even after a while.

“I’d send him out for a couple of weeks. That’ll make him appreciate retirement.”

“He won’t. And he’s not leaving Briggs either.” Olivier shook her head. “Stubborn old bear…”

“He’d come back with another arm chopped off.”

Most likely. Or a leg. And an even greater thirst for vengeance. He’d ask for her to send him out again, and again and again. Until he was all metal and rage. There’d be more flesh belonging to him on Drachman grounds than in Briggs.

Olivier’s eyes went right back to what she’d been reading, like that’s where they were meant to be. But she tried not to reread them, she already knew most by heart. She’d underlined some, even.

There’d be no more of these now. So some of the questions in them would be forever left unanswered.

Then, Miles asked, tentatively:

“Is something the matter between you and the … writer of those things?”

He was looking at the table that remained quite covered in texts.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Olivier replied, but she’d said so without looking up from them as she put a few away and fished out the paperwork, and there Miles had his answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "That girl… Zinnia’s mother had said. She hadn’t been just any girl." I guess this could be considered a tiny reference to a song I really like, [Just Another Girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aemOWBkkUuQ) by The Killers


	15. Unafraid

Before she’d even had breakfast, Zinnia called home. She sat on her couch for a couple of minutes, rummaging her brains to try and remember the number. It’d been so long since she’d had to, she wasn’t even surprised she’d forgotten it.

She didn’t call, they didn’t call her. That was how it always had been, and that hadn’t changed since she’d gone back north. She could feel her mother’s seething energy in the distance, though. But today she had to just ignore all the drama in her family in favor of more important matters.

Her father was supposed to be at home now after his surgery. And Zinnia, as a daughter, was supposed to be there holding his hand and distracting him from the post-op pain. So since she’d decided not to be, the least she could do was give him a call.

The man she’d hired to help them all figure things out answered the phone, and she asked very briefly about how things were, then he got her own father on the line, who reassured her it all was very fine. Wonderfully so, indeed. Zinnia breathed easy after that, even more when her father told her that her mother wasn’t home. It felt as if the conversation was… freer now, somehow, without her being there to mar it with her energy. Also, it meant her father felt well enough to not have her around.

When Zinnia hung up, she took one deep breath. Things were fine now. Her father would soon be up and about as he’d always been, gossip that he was; and everything would return to the way it was before.

On her way to work, she stopped by the tiny newsstand. There was a small stall outside with a few postcards and several other souvenirs. She’d always wondered why the hell they kept that up since Iver hadn’t had a real tourist in years, but today she couldn’t bring herself to scowl at it and actually stood there for quite a while, looking at everything.

She’d promised her father a postcard, after all.

Most of them were in black and white, old photographs of the valley and the small town. Nevertheless, the one that intrigued her the most didn’t adhere to that. It didn’t take the form of a picture but of a painting, and black and white was replaced by multiple shades of blue and white. The sky and the shadows in the mountains felt almost indistinguishable, they merged as if they were one. And all the snow on the slopes and the clouds up above made the painting seem as if both sky and mountain range belonged as one entity and not separately. The fine line between them resembled the still surface of the mirror, but you couldn’t really tell which of the two parts symbolized the reflection and which reality.

Zinnia smiled and got in to pay for it. Her father would surely appreciate the analogy, just like she had.

When she sat down at the counter in Candie’s bookstore, Candie still hadn’t shown up, so Zinnia entertained herself for a while trying to think of what to write on the back of the postcard.

Her pen shook a little, and she felt the words she’d write would always be too inappropriate for what she wanted to convey. Plus, there was also so little space in the back of a postcard to write something good on the first try.

In the end, Zinnia settled for simplicity and a wish.

_This is home now_ _,_ she wrote. _Please tell your knee I can’t wait to show this to it. You’d love it, the food here is always 100% meat._

She knew her father would never come so far north, because he had no need to. But… dreaming was free, _and_ she was certain he would fall in love with Iver the same way he’d fallen in love with Zinnia’s hometown and its people.

“Oh dear, how late am I?” Candie’s voice said as she made her way into the store.

Zinnia chuckled when she saw her, sweating and actually worried about tardiness. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

“Not late at all.”

“You look like you’ve slept less than I have, kid.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Youth these days…” Candie said, sitting down on a stool too.

She somehow was capable of remaining silent for a total of half a minute until she noticed what Zinnia’s hands were toying with and said: “What’d you have there?”

Immediately, Zinnia turned the postcard over so the text wouldn’t be visible.

“Just… something I’ve got to send.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Zinnia nodded. There wasn’t a lot more she could say to that, even if Candie would lengthen a conversation from smaller pieces of information.

“Have you heard about last night?” Candie asked. If she couldn’t prolong a chat, she’d add more wood to the fire.

“No, why? What happened?” It’s not like Zinnia prided herself in her inattentiveness, but she would have liked to think that if something happened in town, she’d find out just like everybody else.

“Gunshots in the distance,” Candie replied. “Briggs men, I suppose. They’ve come out of their fort at last.”

“They do that, yes…” Zinnia muttered, clearly thinking of _who she was thinking_. They emerged out of their fort and disrupted everything solid Zinnia had a grasp on, and then left as if they’d never even been here. Whatever they did up on that grayscale wall, Zinnia didn’t want to know. The idea of a thousand men—or however many there actually were—living there, maintaining the peace in secret, as if peace required secrecy, kind of made her feel even less safe than if they weren’t.

Candie smacked her forearm gently.

“Don’t make light of it, huh? There haven’t been any armed skirmishes for years.” Zinnia realized for the first time in this moment that Candie, despite not being really old by her standards, still might’ve very likely lived through the last time Drachma had marched on Amestris soil. “You be careful! Don’t leave after dark.”

Zinnia just shrugged, though.

“I highly doubt the Drachman will come here. Their fight isn’t with us, is it?”

“Still, you’ve heard me.” Candie stood up and went to set a book straight after she’d suddenly noticed it was askew on the shelf. “You’re not a soldier, and I know you sure like a good risk, so just stay put here and be careful until this is over.”

“Yes, mum,” Zinnia said sarcastically, unable to bite down a laugh after that. She was old enough to know precautions became a necessity sometimes, but it was always funny to hear an adultier adult giving her advice.

Her back turned to Zinnia, Candie began laughing as well. “Mum, she says…” she said.

But Candie might as well just have been. 

* * *

 

When the scouts came to get her from atop the fort, describing the image of twenty of her men returning from the mountains, camouflage uniforms covered in blood that wasn’t their own, Olivier knew that whoever had fallen had taken some major damage.

Had Drachma made a move at last? So predictably? So unsuccessfully? They had grown weak and desperate in all those years, and that always made for an enemy that was easier to conquer.

_Fools,_ she thought, shaking her head. The first openly aggressive encounter in decades and the Drachman had fallen like flies. She would’ve killed to see it.

This seemed to her like they were either truly letting themselves go or they were trying to distract Amestris with a failed feeling of victory. But it wasn’t like Drachma to just send a squad over here to die.

Fourteen men… One single soldier from Briggs would have managed that many kills. If she’d been present, she would have certainly taken them all out on her own.

Buccaneer informed her, so she wouldn’t have to meet all twenty soldiers at the time, that the bodies of the enemy had been left where they’d once stood, as a precaution. And, in a way, as a kindness. They wouldn’t return there for a while, until Drachma had come for their dead, if they did.

Olivier lifted one open palm to shut him up.

“We’re not just going to let them venture in without consequences, not even to retrieve corpses.”

The last time they’d tried to cross the border, weeks ago, it hadn’t ended well. And Drachma was practically begging to be _shown_ just how bad it could get. Pity Olivier wasn’t allowed quite yet to engage in combat. They would have receded so far back into their country no further defense at the border would have been necessary.

“But, sir, the bodies.”

 “Yes. The bodies will be given back. _All_ of them. But they’re missing one, as it is.”

Buccaneer’s face was priceless.

“They don’t know the spy died?” he said.

“How can they?” Olivier said.  Nobody had shown interest in finding their stray spy, had they? “But they will now.”

“We’d lose strategic power by showing we had her and didn’t succeed in taming her.”

_It’s not like Drachma would know that,_ she thought. A dead spy, just like Esfir had said in her final moments, couldn’t spy for either side anymore. Her mouth was shut forever.

“ _We_ will be sending a message over to the bastards,” Olivier replied, “who think they can just win a war without fighting it like men.”

Buccaneer stood up straighter.

“What are your orders, then?”

She thought about it. Bringing the newbies would surely amount to an unforgettable experience they’d always hate her for, no matter how much they needed that lesson, but if they got under attack, she’d be in a position where they wouldn’t be much use, protection-wise, but quite the opposite.

Yet going alone was a suicide mission. How long would the Drachman wait to shoot upon seeing Amestris’ most feared general walk towards them?

“Fetch Miles and meet me at the gate,” she finally said.

By the time they were standing by the ditch, the sun was already declining on the sky, its light tantalizing and distracting. The flowers on the valley took the most entrancing of shapes and colors in the late evening, it all gave the impression that they’d stepped into a magical land.

But there was nothing magical about digging up a rotting corpse.

Olivier dug the shovel into the dirt and got on with it. She reveled in the physical labor that she’d never admit to herself she missed. Fighting, doing some high rank’s dirty work, pushing past the limits everyone else couldn’t.

She felt the eyes of both men on the back of her neck as the dirt piled up on one side of the ditch.

“Stand watch,” she told them. “Shoot anything that moves.”

Nothing would, but at least that gave them something to do until she tasked them to carry Esfir’s body to the battlefield where her comrades had fallen.

Olivier dug, hands bare against the metal of the shovel; Miles and Buccaneer would do the heavy-lifting after, she needed her hands free in case there was an attack. She’d protect them, if it ever came to that.

But the digging was hers to carry out and hers alone. Her kill, her responsibility. Her sweat and the sweet pain from exhaustion would pay for her mistakes.

Once she was done, night was almost upon them. It’d gotten much too late, later than she’d anticipated.

“Gentlemen, get it out of there,” she said, breathing as little as possible because of the stench, even if her lungs ached for air after the exertion.

Buccaneer, though, wasn’t as delicate about it.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ…” he exclaimed as he covered his nose and mouth.

Miles said nothing and helped him with it.

Then they marched towards the mountains.

On the way, she kept picturing meeting the enemy on the grounds she’d managed to keep them off of. She pictured the fighting again after so long, and she pictured her side winning. Always winning. It was definitely the right time, without sunlight and in no man’s land. If the Drachman were coming for their dead, now was the time to hit Amestris where it hurt. Olivier had given them the perfect chance.

She was almost disappointed when she and her second-in-command arrived and saw only the bodies, scattered over the mountainside like discarded pieces in a chest game. A few vultures had come down to peck at their exposed wounds, but they took off flying away as soon as she unsheathed her sword, prepared for a surprise attack.

No living Drachman soldier in sight, she signaled for her men to drop Esfir’s body near where the last sniper had fallen. Then she fished a piece of paper from her pocket and put it between the spy’s rotting teeth.

The message was as crude as the place where it’d been placed—KEEP THE PEACE OR PERISH AT LAST

“General?” Miles said. He didn’t understand these little games, but he still followed her blindly.

“If they come again,” Olivier replied, back turned to them. She’d walked up to the top of the hill, eyes on the horizon which had been ruptured by the peaks in the distance. She couldn’t see the pollution from the Drachman cities from here, but she knew they were there, hiding in plain sight, “it’ll be war.”

“Kind of you to let them know beforehand, boss,” Buccaneer said.

“Kind?” she said, and it became clear the level of judgment present in that single word. “If they come _armed_ again,” she corrected herself, “it’ll be war. And it doesn’t look like they’ve any chances at winning.”

She stopped gazing at the mountains in the background, at the horizon and the sun that soon would be breach the Drachman portion of the Briggs range, and swiftly started walking down, followed by her men.

“I’ll send a batch back here tonight,” she announced.

“We’re letting them bury their dead, after all?”

She turned to face the taller man.

“ _That_ , Buccaneer, is a kindness.” And a kindness not many would do the enemy.

They walked back to the fort in silence.

As promised, Olivier sent a few men back at the site, in case the Drachman did come with weapons and clear intentions. This time she sent the snipers. She wouldn’t bring war down on the enemy until the very last second, when they would realize their mistake only after it was too late to mend it.

She accompanied her men to the door as they went out there again, but she rode in the opposite direction.

* * *

Zinnia stepped out of the bakery with a tremendous desire to go home and just _sit down_ for a full five minutes and not get up until her stomach literally begged for nourishment.

Long days succeeded one another and she no longer knew how long it’d been since she’d returned. She felt like she’d never left in the first place, but her bank account said different.

And her chest as well. She could breathe easy, now, knowing the surgery had gone well enough. She’d already sent the promised postcard too, and she hoped her mother wouldn’t be the first to see it in the mailbox. One never knew if she was still angry enough to tear it apart before her father received it.

Then, in the dimming light of the late evening, Zinnia’s legs quit their walking in the middle of the street on her way home.

Running into _her_ right there now felt almost like an anachronism. She always came when the sun was up and shining, never before and never after, and now the melancholic last rays of light were more of a hue with the blue on her uniform than the warm sun Zinnia was used to seeing her under.

And on top of it all, Olivier was drinking.

A woman bathed in the sunset at one out of the two tables outside, legs apart, inviting, making Zinnia wonder for the span of a moment how it would feel like to walk between them and for once tower over her. And those arms… the sheer strength of them came with the name. She drank from a gigantic jar of beer (the size and weight of which Zinnia’s hands would’ve been unable to hold) with the least amount of poise in the world, and Zinnia’s eyes opened wide in awe. Her eyes saw in slow motion what the rest of her body was incapable of fully processing.

The greatest amount of small human actions coming from the general so far was right under Zinnia’s nose and yet she kept standing where she was, watching but not really daring to look for too many seconds at the same spot. The Ice Queen was miles away from her fort, drowning herself in booze and thought at a very unusual hour. There had to be a reason behind it.

Ice didn’t just melt.

Zinnia didn’t really understand if this… strange feeling in her chest and stomach that had frozen her mid-step meant that she wanted to start a conversation when she finally walked past the other woman.

What would she even say? ‘Good night?’ That would just earn her a disgruntled remark and little else, she shouldn’t bother.

She _wasn’t_ going to bother, she didn’t even have to walk over that side of the now empty main street to go home.

She had absolutely no reason to. All those months of ‘almost’ and blushes and curses under her breath? Zinnia wouldn’t swap the roles now, she had better things to do than to cross the street.

Then why—why had her feet decided they _wanted_ to cross it? What was in it for her feet? What was in it for her pounding heart? Her overexcited lungs, which seemed to have forgotten how to breathe properly?

Her sandals clacked loudly against the cobblestone with every step. She was making her own customized announcement of her presence before she literally stood there, towering like she wanted to, but shaky like a leaf and dry-mouthed.

_What do I say? What do I say? What do I say?,_ she asked herself over and over and over in the hope that the question would answer itself.

Her mouth, devoid of any good words to articulate, was open before Zinnia could tell herself to shut the hell up:

“Fancy seeing you here…” she said.

Olivier looked up slowly. She didn’t seem surprised or particularly bothered or even annoyed by it. She looked like she didn’t care much about whether or not the company was good, or whether there was any company at all.

“Stealing my lines now, are you?” she said, and she managed a smile, soft and small as it was. The kind of ‘small’ that people with broken hearts force out of themselves in times of emotional need. Then, suddenly as it’d begun, Olivier dropped it. Zinnia couldn’t help but notice how smoothly her face transitioned from one expression to another. Also, she had really long eyelashes of a very indeterminate color. Neither blonde nor dark nor brown. Gold-ish gray, if that was even a color. “How is your father?”

“Better, thank you,” Zinnia said.

_Walk, you fool. Keep on walking, don’t linger,_ she thought to herself. She was not walking and that felt like an admission of sorts.

“How’s…” she said, mind blank and mouth taking over like it knew what it was actually doing. “—the, uh, business?”

Olivier smiled again, more of a smirk this time, but equally small.

“Haven’t you heard?” she said. “It’s no longer safe for a youth like you to be out in the streets at night being so close to the border.”

Zinnia _wanted_ to be offended by the word ‘youth’ because she really doubted the general was that much older, but safety took priority when she remembered what Candie had said about last night.

“They breached it?”

Olivier scoffed. “They tried.”

Zinnia stood there in silence for a couple of minutes, not really knowing if it would be more impolite to take off or if she’d feel like a disgrace by saying goodbye.

She had the bright idea to quickly glance at the amount of beer there was left for Olivier to drink, and her heart dove all the way down to the sole of her hurting feet when she discovered it was not an amount that would allow her to take off without Olivier standing up at the same time to leave.

_Time’s running out, do something…_ Zinnia hissed at herself.

Then, after one quick chug at the liquid, Olivier stood up as foreseen and quite in slow motion as well, and Zinnia forgot all about height and size because she felt like her own didn’t factor in. She’d felt tall her whole life, just… not very much so right now.

“You’re out here too. Aren’t you afraid?” she said in the end.

_Wonderful. You’re just making it worse. Shut up!!!_

Olivier held back a smirk.

“No,” she said. “But I’d be if I were you.”

Zinnia made a big show out of looking all around.

“I don’t see any Drachman here trying to kill me. What should I be afraid of?”

But oh that question… that question did not make any of it better, because they both knew the answer to it and neither would dare say it out loud.

“Depends on what scares you.”

“I’m not telling _you_ what scares me.”

They held each other’s gaze for what felt definitely much longer that a few moments.

“Will you walk with me, then,” Olivier asked suddenly, “since neither of us is afraid?”

Now, Zinnia’s feet and general leg area hurt from standing all day long, she longed for her bed or her couch more than she would admit, but Zinnia was also very much an idiot, and when someone threw a challenge like this one in such a lovely subtle manner, she couldn’t refuse.

She couldn’t refuse, no. And maybe it had little to do with the challenge that had really been more of an invitation. She could hear Candie’s voice telling her off in her mind, but she pushed it to the back of her consciousness and ignored all common sense. Drachma wouldn’t be out waiting for her to leave the town.

“Where to?” Zinnia said.

“The dark,” Olivier said with a grin. “Unless, of course, you really are afraid a Drachman soldier will come get us.”

“What will you do, if that happens?” Zinnia muttered because she didn’t need to speak any louder. People were already in their homes and the town was mostly silent enough that she didn’t have to talk very loudly to get understood.

“Let you run to safety,” Olivier said, looking into Zinnia’s dark eyes like she wasn’t afraid of it deep in her gut. “Cover you. Fight. Win.”

It was Zinnia’s turn to smirk.

“I don’t need anybody to cover me, General,” she said and began walking.

Olivier joined her a few steps later. For some reason, she believed that. Those eyes she’d been bold enough to stare into had more edge to them than any sword. They housed the kind of strength that wasn’t acquired as a skill but honed through defeat.

Silence and tension reigned supreme for a couple of minutes. Olivier wondered why the hell this was a _thing,_ walking. Walking with someone you thought you wouldn’t tolerate.

But Zinnia wasn’t writing now, or in the way, or defying anything. She was just a girl, dressed in a ridiculous knee-length gray dress that clung too much to her hips. A girl that led the way because she probably wouldn’t let herself become just a follower.

And Olivier couldn’t find a reason or excuse to hate her, much less to not tolerate her presence.

It didn’t take them long to reach the outskirts of the town, where the buildings gave way to miles and miles of flowers and grass. Under the very last, thin rays of sunlight, it felt like the black of the night and the surviving warmth of the sun were battling for dominance over the life that sprung out of the earth.

“Are you not writing now because of your father?” Olivier asked after a while. The stems of the plants around them brushed audibly against their legs.

Zinnia gave a little start at the question.

“I thought you didn’t want me to write,” she half-joked. Her skin still remembered the hardcore blush of that first day when Olivier had walked to her with all the strength of a raging fire and made her feel like she was ten instead of almost thirty.

“I never said so.”

“It was made implicit.”

“You could still write in your free time, for yourself rather than… for others. It’s good to have a hobby,” Olivier said, aware that she was a woman who didn’t have one. Because eating and walking around couldn’t be considered a hobby, and that’s all she did when she left Briggs.

“I don’t want one now,” Zinnia said softly, looking up at the stars, finally beginning to pop up under the blue surface of the day sky. “I used to.” She held herself, realizing that the night meant slightly colder temperatures. “I used to think I could squeeze some life out of everything. But now in my free time I just… want to rest.”

Olivier was going to add something when they both heard a noise in the distance—hooves against the dirt. Olivier unsheathed her sword, and Zinnia, against her expectations, stood where she was, legs slightly apart to hold position even if she had no weapon.

After a few seconds, they could discern that it was just a rider in Amestris’ military uniform, and Olivier put the sword aside at the time that Zinnia exhaled.

“Is that for you?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Olivier mused.

The rider slowed down his horse at the last second. With one hand he kept the reigns tightly held, with the other he saluted his superior.

“Sir, you’re needed at the fort,” he said.

“Very well, then,” she muttered.

She turned to face Zinnia and offered her a hand to shake. So much in such a small gesture. Zinnia probably would never even finish figuring out exactly how much went into that handshake. Those months of confusion and loathing… and now they were holding hands like new acquaintances.

If Zinnia had known the protocol, then maybe it all would have made sense—but no. This had nothing to do with protocol. This was a peace offering, and that much was clear even if Zinnia would never know what hid beneath its surface.

Maybe even Olivier herself didn’t know.

“Good night,” she told the flower girl, then she got on her soldier’s horse to go find her own to ride back on.

Zinnia watched them trot away until they were but a blur of dim lines in the darkness. She sighed when she lost sight of them—of her.

“Good night, General Armstrong,” she said, but no one was there to hear it.

On the horse, barely a few yards away, the soldier turned around a little to tell Olivier what was going on.

“The bodies are gone, sir.” He told her how they’d come, a handful of men with their faces concealed, and dragged away the bodies of their comrades without taking a second look at the soldiers from Briggs. “What should we make of this?”

Olivier remained quiet for some moments.

“That they don’t want war. Not for now, at least. This was their second chance to attack and they didn’t take it.”

“Then now we won’t attack either?”

She sighed and shook her head.

“ _Now_ we keep blocking their access to this country. And when war comes, they will know why we are feared even on our own soil. But not before.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this week I finished chapter 28 and... now, looking back at older chapters like this one, I think I'm falling even more in love with this story ^^. I'll keep posting on schedule, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep writing at my usual pace - college is time consuming XD


	16. A promise of a different kind

Summer slipped out of their fingers like sand. With every tick of the clock, the wind took precious grains of summer away from them. One day, all that time would pile up to form a beautiful beach, licked in equal measure by both tide and sky. But for now it was all stolen moments that would never see their potential fulfilled.

Zinnia no longer frowned when Olivier walked into the bakery. And Olivier no longer bothered to say something witty that she hoped would make it clear who was in charge. There was no need. None of them needed anything from each other, and none of them would find any pleasure in continuing behaving like their spring selves.

New season, new angle. And the angle was mutual silence, mutual tolerance, and the moment for very, very scant and subtle exchanges of words.

Greetings, the occasional comment that didn’t go unnoticed but didn’t get a reply back, farewells. Those were especially fun, because none would admit that they’d still be seeing each other the next day, so they tried their best at not adding that nuance to their goodbyes.

Zinnia was very good at it, because she knew this was just a silly old game the general played to pass the time. Why did Zinnia follow her lead, then? Not boredom—she had two jobs and a house to keep in a decent state. Not interest—because nothing was coming out of this two-way newfound acceptance. Not hope?

Eventually, if war broke out, Olivier would be seen here less and less. Eventually, if Zinnia’s ties to this place dissolved in the acidity of life, she’d take off and move somewhere that could hold her attention longer than Iver had.

Eventually, perhaps, Zinnia would find it in her to write. And if she also found the time to sell what she wrote, who was to say this new dynamic wouldn’t vanish in favor of the old resentment?

Nothing of the life they both enjoyed those days was etched in stone, it was written on sand.

And sand blew away, scattering the message. It got wet, and every grain forgot if it was the distinctive one. An O could very well turn into a D. Something that once stood there as an important pillar would no longer stand for anything.

Why worry? Why try to preserve it? Why think it through? Zinnia just went with it, and at night she did allow herself a minute to contemplate what her life had been, what it now supported itself on, and what it would one day inevitably become.

And Olivier, in her permanent aura of pissed-off mystery who does not want to be unveiled, didn’t seem to mind. Hellos, orders, small talk, goodbyes. Nowhere near as entertaining and enticing as an open battle, but it had to do. At least the hurricanes inside her were taking it easy now that they had no solid ground to devastate or be swallowed by.

Without anything to judge, without anything that drove her up the walls, she went quiet. She came down here to relax from the job that she didn’t want to distance herself from, nothing more. Whoever she met while she relaxed wasn’t important. Whoever she missed when she rode back to the border didn’t matter. What mattered was the job, the men, the fort, the country.

Amestris held, and Amestris would hold. Because Drachma had retreated for now. The border was empty, secure.

And that was why she could allow herself these breaks in the first place. When war fell down from the sky like a bomb, she’d have no choice but to turn her back on anything human and embrace the parts of her everybody else seemed to see as the whole reality within her.

Eventually, that was all there would be. The war she’d craved and missed, and the war she strived to win. War, war, war. Was it so selfish of her to postpone it for a few minutes every day? Didn’t Miles agree it was good for her health? Didn’t the men do the same, after all—come to Iver to eat and drink and drown whatever personal sorrows she wasn’t in on?

Eventually, war would drown them all.

Today, the only thing to drown in was the clouds, threatening rain in their dark gray color. And yet, Olivier saddled her horse and rode down anyway. As soon as the first drops fell, she’d turn back. But for now she could still enjoy the sun beams filtering through the gray.

Likewise, when war seeped into all their lives, she’d turn around and she’d never look back. But … now she felt strangely compelled to look forward.

At the valley, every green plant on it, every life, every stone, all the paths merging together in the distance, way down south.

At the town and its streets and the people who crowded the small establishments because there was not much else to do and the terrible food that wasn’t really that bad after a while … and the sky. Wherever she was, she’d look up at the sky, and no matter how many clouds carpeted it, it would still be there; that shade of blue that always brought her back to reality.

She got off the horse and she looked up now. Her blue had disappeared entirely from up there during the ride. Gray had taken over, cold and distant gray. Gray like the pictures from her youth, with her as the center of the frame because she was the firstborn, the heir. Her mother’s face had gone paler than white when she’d seen her daughter dressed in blue, ready to leave the capital forever.

Olivier’s horse refused to follow her on her way through the main street. It moved around nervously, breathing hard.

The rain hadn’t come yet.

“It’s just a storm,” she told the horse. Or herself. Storms were nothing to fear, but the feeling of loneliness they brought along weighed heavy.

The first thunder of the day roared a few miles away. Briggs must be already covered in rainwater by now. Then the rain began to fall, cool at touch. Olivier looked around to see if there was any place she could take refuge in, but she’d never be able to fit the animal through any of the shop’s doors.

It neighed loudly and tried moving away but she held the reins tight.

“Calm down!”

Her voice was swallowed by another thunder, the echoes of it nearer than the last time. If this idiot of a horse wasn’t making a scene, she’d ride back, but doing it like this was not safe.

“In here!”

Olivier looked behind her and saw the flower girl’s head out of the bakery’s window.

“Horse!” she said, to make herself heard over the storm.

“Canopy!” Zinnia said.

Olivier grunted but she dismounted, pulled at the reins and walked over there. When the door opened she was suddenly made aware of how soaked her uniform was, her hair. This wasn’t a state of dress she would like to parade.

She tied the horse to window’s bars, under the canopy, so it would remain dry, and then went in, dripping wet onto a floor that wasn’t her own.

Under the gray light of the day, nothing inside the place resembled the nature of it. They hadn’t even gotten the few chairs outdoors in to shield them from the downpour, and the lamps were all off.

The owner of the place stood behind the counter, looking apprehensively at the delicate food he’d prepared that nobody was going to eat now because the entire town was hiding inside their own houses.

“Sudden storm, huh?” he said as a greeting.

Olivier just nodded because that didn’t honestly require a full response and wasn’t meant to elicit one. Even if it had, her eyes strayed from the food stand towards the girl who still had half her body out the window, watching the rain fall like it was the first time she was being witness to it.

When Zinnia stepped off, body now full back inside, she smiled. And it looked like it was happening spontaneously, without any complicated thought process behind it. Like she was happy in this weather.

“Don’t get to see much rain, do you?” Olivier asked. She found it funnier than it had to be. The girl looked like a puppy rolling down a snowy hill. Olivier was certain she would’ve danced under the rain for as long as the storm lasted.

Zinnia immediately blushed a little at the question, too.

“Not in a while, no,” she said. The last time it had rained like this, with the elements giving it their best against all human wishes that it would stop, Zinnia had still been living in Central. Anthony and her had snuck under a roof to shelter themselves from the rain.

“Get used to it. There’s no real summer here.”

“That’s true,” Zinnia’s boss said. “Soon it’ll be cold again.” He sounded nostalgic.

Zinnia looked out the window again, frowning.

“Just a little rain and you’re all about the cold now?” she said. “Summer only just began! It was still chilly in the mornings a few weeks ago.”

Her boss and Olivier looked at each other and both began to laugh. At her, clearly. At her southern attitude, which neither snow nor rain nor a thousand years in these lands would ever truly conceal.

Zinnia wrinkled her nose in disagreement.

“In that case, I’m going to go. Charlie, do you need anything else around here?”

He looked at Olivier instead of replying right away.

“General, will you be having your usual today?”

The cakes and baked goods stared right at Olivier, asking her, begging her to say yes. But she just shook her head. She didn’t want to move much and sprinkle it all with rainwater.

With her negative, the baker turned to Zinnia once again:

“You really want to leave now? You’ll flood your own house once you get there.”

In that moment, the worst thing that could happen happened. Olivier’s stomach decided it would make itself noticed. She suddenly had to repress the urge to just take off without another word, but that wasn’t very… grown-up.

Zinnia eyed her for a second or two, thinking, then she said:

“I’ll stay. Let’s get this woman something to eat, shall we?” And she walked behind the counter. She moved around here differently than she did in the bookshop. Zinnia sure was comfortable around books, but here… she acted freely, giving the impression that she co-owned the place. Anybody who came here would immediately think that she’d molded bread and whipped cream for as long as she’d been alive. Olivier saw the remaining lines of soft muscle and remembered the stance she’d taken the other day instead of fleeing or requesting protection, and Olivier knew this girl was no baker and no bookseller.

Eventually, she sat down. Here, she was just a costumer, albeit a special one, because she was sure nobody else got as good a service as she did.

When she got her usual portion of sweet indulgence, she didn’t sit down this time. Zinnia looked at her from behind the counter.

“So,” she said. “What brings you here? Work? Or just… the food?”

She allowed herself a tiny smile. No one—absolutely no one—liked the food. You learned to tolerate it and then it maybe wasn’t so bad, but it had nothing on the delicacies of other regions. Perhaps the tiramisu took the cake, though. Whatever amount of coffee it had, the rest of it masked the taste. And it did seem to be Olivier’s one and only choice of dessert. Not that she ever ate anything before it.

“Does it matter?” she asked.

Zinnia shrugged.

“Not really, but…” She took a quick look at the ongoing storm. “Seems like we’re going to be trapped in here for quite a while, might as well make the best of it.” She smiled. “Charlie’s not the most effusive speaker.”

He smiled.

“I may bake like the gods, but … chitchat’s not my area.”

And at that, he went back to reading the newspaper, probably to distract himself from watching over his precious creations waiting for the perfect costumer.

Zinnia’s eyes span from the window to Olivier’s lips—and it became clear after a few times it was _always_ the lips her gaze returned to, never the nose or eyes, and always curiously like she expected Olivier to breathe fire sooner than later.

“Which one is it, then?” Zinnia asked again after a while. “Work or food?”

Olivier merely ate.

“Food,” she said.

Zinnia leaned on the counter with both arms, facing the general’s way.

“Still no clues on that thing you were investigating?”

It took Olivier a few tries until she understood Zinnia meant alkahestry. “No.”

Zinnia’s face and smile fell.

“Ah,” she said. “I was… I guess I hoped you would get to the bottom of it.”

“There’s nothing for you to worry about. Your safety won’t be compromised by that particular lack of information.”

“I know,” Zinnia said, shrugging. “Still, mysteries aren’t as fun as they look.”

She knew why she’d said that.

Olivier smiled a tiny smile.

“I guess not, no.”

Almost an hour and a few ‘how can you eat that’ jokes later, when the rain began to fall a little less bone-crushingly, Zinnia had been leaning on the wall by the window for a while, trying her damn best at keeping her eyes on the street and not the inside of the bakery, where Charlie continued reading his newspaper with all the calmness in the world and Olivier munched on what might as well have been her third self-indulgence.

The general rose slowly from her seat, thanked them both even if it sounded entirely absent-minded, and decided the storm had subsided enough for her to ride home now, if her horse allowed it.

Zinnia’s eyes were open wide for the whole of it. A ‘thank you’? No tension whatsoever besides from her own? This wasn’t the first time it happened, but she found herself more and more shocked at it the more often she noticed that lack in their few interactions.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait it out?” Zinnia even said, out of the stupidest desperation in the world, the kind that allowed her no quarter and no intervention to keep it at bay. “I’m going to stay in till it stops raining.”

Despite the obvious invitation, Zinnia saw in Olivier’s face that the ‘no’ was the only answer she could give. After all, she was a busy woman, and probably had a thousand things to tend to in her impregnable fort. People to kill, orders to bark, things to organize. Military things, whatever the hell that entailed.

Olivier stood tall and proud like a tree as she untied her horse to the window bars and threw her hair back. Zinnia kept telling herself to look away after a few seconds of uninterrupted staring. At least her mouth wasn’t open.

“Maybe another time,” “Olivier said, her tone final.

Another time… That is, if she let a storm catch her off guard again.

“Well, then…” Zinnia replied. She suddenly didn’t know what to say. A ‘no’ was a ‘no’, even if it was so elegantly disguised. She had no clue whatsoever why a woman like Olivier was disguising her negatives, but that, after all, was none of Zinnia’s business.

She watched as the general mounted her horse, gave a curt nod to her as a farewell, and rode off into the last and thin drops of rain. She looked like the rider of those bronze statues in Central, heroes of some acclaimed battle that present-day commoners had forgotten about. She had the spirit of all those commanders before her who had led armies to victory and returned to the praise of the people, glued to their horse like they made for one entity instead of two.

If Zinnia had had a camera at reach, she would’ve taken a picture of that moment when the light of a far-off lightning had hit Olivier’s hair.

Zinnia would’ve sent it to her father, as if it were another postcard.

_This, dad, is the woman who watches over us all. Sometimes I really doubt she can be human and of this time. Doesn’t she look to you like she might’ve been famous in the military centuries ago? Doesn’t she look to you like someone far too powerful to live in the times we’re living now? Doesn’t it seem unfitting to have someone like that sent off to the harshest place in the country, doing a job no one wants or cares about?_

Zinnia shook her head after concocting that weird mental image to try and vanish it away, but it persisted.

Maybe, just maybe, she had to go back to writing again. If only to get this all out of her head, where it could _not_ belong. And she could actually keep it to herself this time. Hell only knew the kind of stuff that could come out of that… 

* * *

 

Summer moved forward inexorably, and Zinnia still would not hold on to anything she wrote. And she wasted paper and ink beyond her own expectations. But nothing stuck. Every word she got out kept ascending until it disappeared, none of them wanted to stay.

Quitting, though, was never an option. She just… wasn’t pursuing this all the way. What for? The things her mind created, the strings of words it put together… Those weren’t the type of thing she could ever share with another human being.

She could never let anyone read any of it, so she might as well not finish it, not pressure herself to. Nobody was ever going to have access to it, so she was allowed to make it as bad and unfinished as she wanted to.

She was allowed to look into the reality she’d described and call it over-pompous and exaggerated. Untrue. She was allowed to spill and spill over the paper and never actually take a second look at what she’d written before she put it away.

Besides, with the ongoing current of soldiers coming and going into town, who had time to write anyways? Briggs might’ve been on the lookout for Drachma, but the men sure as hell liked to make the most out of their free time by drinking beer and eating like there was no tomorrow.

And Zinnia had two jobs. No time to do anything but gossip silently and distract herself from the less pompous and not as exaggerated version of reality that walked into the bakery once a day without fault.

War might have been brewing but… not anytime soon, apparently.

What kind of a commanding officer would leave headquarters this often, and to do nothing, in times of war?

Olivier sat in the sun and did not take a single layer of clothing off. Zinnia tried not to feel sorry for her but, in spite of what everybody had told her, summer here _was_ hot and didn’t sport the kind of weather that you could survive in long sleeves.

Sometimes, in her morning breaks while with Candie, Zinnia would sit in the sun with her, but neither of them said much. They just wanted some peace and quiet. Then, later, they’d move their chairs to the shade because it had already gotten too warm to bear any longer.

It felt the same it should’ve felt to share a space with literally everybody else, with an exception. Neither of them were ‘anybody else’. They were close, so they didn’t talk much. Zinnia would’ve asked about business again but she wouldn’t really know how to follow a conversation about strategy and lands and enemies and budgets. And she supposed Olivier had also run out of polite but disinterested questions about books and her personal life. Once she’d told her that her father was alright, that was it. Olivier couldn’t go on asking if he was fine, because she knew he was.

The realization that the one conversation they’d had and stretched as far as possible was over hit them both in the chest like lightning, then a terrible feeling dissolved in their veins. When a conversational topic is over, if you want to continue talking, you need to find a new one that won’t die for a while. What those two could’ve talked about would have lasted five minutes tops. Perhaps it was better to just be in silence and listen to their own hearts beat, urging them both to find something to say and find it soon.

The feeling got worse, too, when they became extra aware that one day they’d tire of looking for things to say and just opt for going back to their normal lives, to the lives that didn’t involve sitting somewhere doing nothing except quietly and intermittently looking at the person sitting next to you.

And how terrifying that thought could grow to be in the right light.

Olivier found free time from beneath the piles of work she should be doing, and she made up for the time lost late at night under Miles’ judgmental eyes. But she’d be damned if she let this indulgence go before it was really over.

Her goddamn sanity rested on this hour she spent outdoors, breathing in clean air and listening to the sounds of small town life. A life she didn’t want but perhaps envied to some extent. They were happy, in their innocence, and they didn’t look up at the sky in search for something better, greater. They liked their existence as it was, and probably didn’t know how much more they could have access to if they looked around. Their ignorance _was_ bliss.

And this girl, with her dresses and bare knees and her messy hair and messier eyes… She sat there every day, she worked among them every day, and she had the same look in her eye Olivier did: Envy. What if. But never ‘I want that’.

Summer began to wither away, and the horizon threatened with storms and clouds and days when the uniform didn’t bother her at all in the sudden lack of heat.

The sun felt overwhelming at times, then other days its warmth was insufficient, the breeze blew chill enough to counter it. And the nights slowly adopted a longer length. The few electrical lights in town were on sooner than a month before; Olivier saw it on the patrols she still participated in.

Soon, the valley would go dormant for the winter, and only Briggs would stand throughout the winter. What was she supposed to do until spring, other than hold the border? What would she entertain herself with now when she was overworked?

She felt chills down her spine in the mornings, when it was a little bit colder than it’d been last week, and only the sun at Iver’s main street calmed her down. For a while.

Eventually, there would be no sun.

Today, when she was back, Zinnia was already pretty busy trying to get her ice cream not to fall on her lap and ruin her dress. She made the most adorable of faces trying to get all of it with her tongue, like a cat licking at its food with all the enthusiasm in the world.

Olivier didn’t smile at it now. She had the ice of her name impaling her chest as a reminder that summer was coming to its end, and that it meant losing this last free glimpse into what a normal life was like.

“Something on my face?” Zinnia said all of a sudden. Olivier was brought back to reality and found herself staring at her.

“You’re going to drop that and vandalize the street,” she said, very serious. “And someone will have to do something about that.”

“I thought lately you were less intent on throwing me out of here.” Zinnia, sheepish.

Silence.

“You won’t want to stay when the cold comes.”

“Who knows?” Zinnia said. “Maybe I’ll stick around longer than you think.” She raised an eyebrow.

But Olivier shook her head and let it be. No one stayed the winter. And when the migrations started, the flower girl would go south with them, she was sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting closer and closer to the heart of this fic with this gratuitous mention of these migrations... ^^ I'm so excited to share what happens next, honestly
> 
> Also, fun fact: what inspired this chapter was an image I had in my mind of Olivier riding under the peculiar, chiaroscuro light of a storm.


	17. The last of the summer

Witnessing the break of dawn from the top of the wall counted as a privilege, even after a couple of hours of uninterrupted watch and the quenching need for sleep it brought along. The mountains shone under a different light, their colors sublimated under the supreme rule of the first rays of white sunlight, always thinner and more translucent but never for too long.

The sky gave birth to a new day, parting its cloudy legs to give way to the definite engulfing yellow light that bathed the top of Fort Briggs first, then travelled down to the paths between the mountains and spread as far as Amestris’ southern border.

Miles appreciated the simplicity of it, the routine. Every morning, without fail, this would happen. And every morning, without fail, Miles wished he would be allowed to see it. But he couldn’t always sign himself up for the last night shift just for the sunrise.

If only it had been that. The sunrise entailed a new start, something that most people in this world didn’t get often. This sunrise reminded him of how lucky he had been to run into Olivier Armstrong’s indisputable iron fist. Up here, many years ago, she’d challenged him.

The oppressor had sheltered the oppressed. It had been a truthfully long time since Miles had thought of her simply as Amestrian. Or as an oppressor. She was an outlaw, like the rest of them, although she’d made sure to clarify publicly that, even if she’d made an effort to deconstruct the toxicity of who she’d been before, she would always belong to the first category.

Miles’s only home had been the military. A body without a head, a pile of individual cells that needed a unified voice to move. And he’d become a soldier at the worst possible moment for someone of his skin- and eye- and hair-color.

_Ishvalan,_ people would mutter behind his back.

Olivier had frowned, helped him fake his name and declare the old soldier dead, and had given him a home and never a choice. She’d excused her actions on account of the fact that she needed him.

But he had seen through it. Olivier Armstrong might have been a practical woman above all, yet she didn’t allow for her soldiers to suffer.

He remembered this, more than any other time, when he watched the northern sun descend the Drachman mountains.

Today Buccaneer stood by his side, as refreshed as he’d began the shift many hours ago. To him, it could’ve well been September 1914 or September 1885. Time didn’t bother with him, it was a battle Buccaneer seemed to always win. Miles didn’t think it should be possible for a man his age to so stoically survive all the things Briggs had thrown his way, but, of course, Buccaneer survived it all. If in the end this overexertion at the fort devolved into war, Miles didn’t dare doubt that Buccaneer would be the last man standing when it was all over.

“I’m fucking starving,” he complained now, like a child who’s hungry.

“You’re always ‘fucking’ something…” Miles muttered, eyes still on the horizon behind which the enemy hid, as expertly as Briggs had always stood proudly on the border.

Buccaneer guffawed.

“I wish.”

“Don’t start, huh? I’m tired. I don’t want to listen to your stories now. I’ve been here for most of them, anyway.”

“Then what? Do we just stare at the mountains? Nobody’s going to invade right now.”

“Well, for once, I wish that they did.” Miles sighed. He didn’t, not really. Drachma would declare war on them, sooner or later. And as ready as Briggs was to withstand a siege or whatever they decided to unleash, nobody really craved the brute spectacle of war. “We’d get it over with, at least.”

And they could go back to the way things had been before. Hard work, but never too much of it. Bad food, but never too little of it. Awful working hours but never too many in a row. And calm. Miles would miss the calm.

Buccaneer, on the other hand, took none of this seriously, as always. What use was worrying when you’d already won all the battles you’d entered? Odds were he would also come alive out of this one, which was exactly why he could afford to make jokes.

“And probably also die,” he joked loudly. “Before my … _retirement_.”

If he was almost seven feet high and with an automail arm, Miles, too, would be that confident about his own survival.

Miles started laughing too, because the rumored retirement of Captain Buccaneer had become fresh gossip, and Briggs could always make the best out of it. There were already several stories circulating the fort, most of which had been concocted by Buccaneer himself.

“Somewhere warm, she says,” Buccaneer went on. And he went on because, Miles knew, he wanted to cheer him up a little. Watches were boring on one’s own, and sometimes that lack of activity became loneliness. “’Haven’t you ever given it a thought? A quiet happy life, somewhere warm...’” He’d imitated Olivier’s voice. “How about _she_ does? Might make something out of it. The only thing I’d do is sweat!”

And copiously. Buccaneer’s favorite activity other than being loud and telling ridiculous stories of his youth that everyone knew already was showing off his body like he’d won it at a fair. Unfortunately, that included access to information of the bodily fluid kind.

“Tell her that.” Miles nodded. “Maybe she’ll keep you here if only to not have to picture the image.”

“Yeah, maybe…” This time Buccaneer’s tone had returned to normal. Miles figured he was thinking about the inevitable, about saying goodbye to the only thing he knew in life. “Where would you go, if you could?”

“I don’t know,” Miles replied, honestly.

He’d never really given it much thought. He’d already accepted the fact that, unless something major happened, his life was Briggs’ to take or save. ~~~~

“Well, the world’s a wide motherfucker.” Buccaneer shrugged. “You could go anywhere.”

“In my retirement? I’d probably be too tired to. I’d just want to rest.”

“Yeah, but where?” Buccaneer insisted. “That’s the whole fucking point, Miles. Pick a goddamn nice spot to grow old in.”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I like it here. I’ve nowhere else to go.”

“You’re no fun,” Buccaneer grumbled. “Well, _I_ ’d buy a cottage literally two miles away from here. Build it with my own two hands if I had to. And she’d have to watch me live there and shoot any Drachman that crosses over for her. She’d have to _thank me_.”

The worst part of it was that he sounded terribly serious, and Miles didn’t doubt for one second that Buccaneer would stroll around the mountains whenever he could, piling up sticks to build a house from where to figuratively flip Olivier off.

An unkind thing to do, considering the only thing their superior wanted to achieve with her policy was collective survival. They lived by the motto of ‘survival of the fittest’, but sometimes it became too palpable that this magic phrase didn’t always apply. They didn’t survive out of strength or plain aptitude. Briggs men survived on their wit to assess a situation before going in. And, at the end of the day, because of the orders of their general.

Strength prevailed, but strength hadn’t always lived on. Many men had died so today’s men could stand where they stood.

Miles’s eyes turned stern. “You know why she wants you out.”

“She’s a fool, that woman. One’d be hard-pressed to get a retirement form approved literally everywhere else in this country… but no. She _needs_ us outta here in case we die, ain’t that right? Well, too late… too late, Miles. We all know what can happen. None of us here is a kid. In any case, _she_ is.” Buccaneer breathed out—loudly. “She’s dreaming if she thinks I’ll quit Briggs that easy.”

“We’ll miss you around here,” Miles said, measuring his words. He didn’t want to verbally agree with Buccaneer on this, because in the end when the time came Buccaneer would just have to do what he was told. And if Olivier ordered him to leave the province, he would have to. Miles didn’t question that fact, which they both knew to be true, jokes aside. “It’ll be good to have you around for a visit from time to time.”

Buccaneer’s smirk was almost as intense to the eye as the sunrise.

“… Provided you wanna listen to my stories then, when I’m an _old man._ ”

“Shut up and keep watch,” Miles grumbled.

He would miss those stories next year. The fort would become a quieter place for a while, until the next big and boisterous storyteller rose among them.

He sighed. Buccaneer’s absence would be noted.

Then, watching the day bloom like a flower before his very eyes, Miles thought about his own retirement. That was still many years away, a dreamy notion he didn’t feel like entertaining. Would Olivier still remain in northern land by then? She was older than he was, perhaps she would have already retired. Or, and this seemed more likely to the major, she’d still be barking out orders, a little more stubborn than she was now.

She would send him away, and he’d… he’d go south. But where?

“Ishval,” Miles barely muttered.

“What?” Buccaneer said, turning to look at him instead of at the ground beneath them.

“If I could go anywhere, I’d… I’d go to Ishval,” Miles muttered, his eyes still on the border. “See what’s left of it, anyway.”

“You know what’s left.” Buccaneer sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know how you do it, knowing what this institution has done and still sticking around.” He put his huge hand on Miles’s left shoulder. “But I’m glad you do it. This wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Miles smiled and reached out a bare hand for him to shake. Buccaneer did, and the grin on his face was infectious. How many winters had it been, already, since they’d met each other?

“And what’s the plan if the general refuses to let you live near Briggs?” Miles asked after a while.

“Is she going to stop me?” Buccaneer replied, as a clear challenge.

Miles couldn’t help chuckling. That would be a worthy fight to witness. The bear against the mountain.

“She might.”

“Let her try.” Buccaneer smirked. “I don’t care how _retired_ I am, this place will always be home, and all of you family.”

To be fair, Miles thought, finally allowed to taste his sunrise with a touch of silence, Buccaneer _had_ spent over half of his long life in that fort. 

* * *

 

Olivier, unlike her men atop the wall, didn’t have patrol duties until much later, so for now she was sitting in her office, glued to her telephone, trying to find answers to questions she’d already established as useless. And the rest of the world, of course, did consider them to be unanswerable as well, which didn’t help the vein in her forehead to stop throbbing.

“Yes. Access to the records these past ten years, yes.” Olivier breathed through her nose in an attempt to remain calm. “What do you mean, you’re not _authorized_? Do you know who you’re talking to? I’m looking to increase the number of officials. I don’t know, ask whoever is in charge. Yes, I’ll hold…”

She didn’t know what had led her to actually make this annoying phone call. But she was tiring of sitting around doing nothing. Even if she went out there and watched the border like everybody else, the border did not move. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. Gunpowder in the air was still just a wish of hers. The sooner it came, the sooner the war would be won. But no, Drachma was pacing it, like they always had. _On top of being cowards, they’re idiots,_ she thought. Either that, or their master plan, if it existed, was far superior than any of hers.

She would exhaust every bullet point in the list before she gave up trying to find ways to outsmart their previous, failed ideas.

As for the sudden phone call, she really doubted there was anybody in Central’s records of Xingese descent. She really, really doubted it. As far as she remembered, there definitely were old Xingese bloodlines living in Amestris, but she’d be hard-pressed to trace them all to the current day. She would have better luck, if any, tracking down the military records. Although, so far, she couldn’t say she’d struck gold.

She knew there wouldn’t be any soldier alive. She just knew. When they confirmed it, she wouldn’t feel disappointed. She wasn’t allowed to. She’d just blindly move on. To the next thing. To the next shift and the next budget list. Because she had to.

She tried to remember if she knew anybody who could’ve been biracial. But all that came to mind were the features on Mustang’s face, and she scowled at those. Even if he happened to really come from a Xingese family, he was an alchemist above everything else. A war hero—an undeserved title, if you asked her. Maybe she would write to him— _maybe_ —in case he had information she could find useful. Maybe. She was running out of other options, after all. But what were the odds of Mustang, hero of Ishval and most annoying officer of all, knowing enough about alkahestry to help Briggs weaponize it?

Then the person on the other line came back, and as expected, the only thing they could give her as a half-hearted apology.

“Go be terribly sorry somewhere where that’s useful,” she spat at them, and then she hung up.

Sealed records could be opened, but even when they were, like now, that didn’t mean shit. She still had no upper hand over the Drachman tech. The tanks were, frankly, improving more than she’d thought, but going nowhere near as far as they should. The promise of war danced in midair with the dust and no one could trust Drachma to make it true in the future instead of now. And… alkahestry? At this point the word evoked nothing but failure.

_The flow of life has grown stale_ , Olivier thought to herself.

The knock on the door brought her back to the one reality that had kept her going this long: she couldn’t let this place become stagnant as well.

Some soldiers came in, all trying to hide behind one another. One of them was Austin, from Central. He’d been suspiciously quiet lately, without participating in any disaster, which Olivier knew to appreciate by now.

He stepped forward with a big smile on his face. She frowned. Where were the days of this kid being afraid of her scowl?

When he opened his mouth, he asked for permission for him and his mates to leave for an hour or so—newbies, of course. Only the newbies thought they _had_ to ask permission.

She observed them for a few moments. The only one who didn’t cower by the door was this Austin boy, survivor of a few nights doing dishes and more than one terrifying glare. He had guts, after all, didn’t he? Perhaps this was his moment, the moment when he truly became one of her people.

“Just get out of my sight,” she mumbled at the room at large.

“Then we can go?” Austin said.

“I don’t know, _can_ you?” She rolled her eyes when he didn’t react because he hadn’t got the joke. “I’m not your mother, Austin. Is it your break?”

“Yes!” he said energetically.

“Then you may go.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She snorted.

“Thank someone else.”

When they left between whispers, she smiled to herself. He’d passed the test, he was no longer just a Central dog. No one ever was for too long. 

* * *

 

Days hardly scorched the land surrounding Iver anymore. The valley endured gentle sunlight, then the breeze which summer had carelessly set loose as time went by devoured the trees and the remaining flowers without daring yet to end any of them.

Zinnia wondered, during the brief spans of time she did spend outdoors, if the north had its own understanding of the seasons and their duration or if to its people summer and autumn were one and the same. Down south, where she’d been living in places she could no longer regard as ‘home’, summer made the town almost inhabitable during the two first thirds of the day, and autumn came with slightly less intense heat waves during which one could leave the house without the prospect of a certain sunburn.

Here, even at noon, she now needed to bring a jacket everywhere, and long gone were the days when she could bare her legs. The people around her still hadn’t gotten to that point, comfortable for the moment with lighter clothing and enjoying the last remnants of a sun they weren’t too used to having all around the year. This amounted to another difference between her and them, a reminder that no matter how long she lived there, how kindly everyone treated her, Zinnia still belonged in the limbo between cardinal points.

Surprisingly, the town soon became infested with Briggs soldiers. Now, it was no longer their commander who rode all the way down the valley for a drink or some food. Officers arrived, strolled, sat, and then left to return a few days later. There was so much blue around, Zinnia followed it with her eyes, avid to find a body wearing it proudly that was never the one actually walking past her.

These men had her broad shoulders and strong arms and filled their uniforms just like she did, but none walked that upright, no one bore the mark of discipline nor had the stance of someone who had been in charge long enough to fear the post she held and uphold her values to save everyone beneath her. These were just… soldiers. Men of family and tradition and loyalty. Zinnia did not want _them_.

Free from the strain in the mysterious fort where rumor said they prepared for the upcoming war, Briggs men came into the local bakery and filled their mouths with warm bread and sweet desserts Zinnia served with a watering mouth.

She stood behind the counter, a jacket over her shoulders, and heard them talk. That, at least, conveyed the feeling of summer better than the weather. Freedom, exaltation, enjoyment, life. A cycle of stories instead of seasons.

When she was off work herself, she sat where she’d used to—where she knew she would be easily found if _some_ body wanted to see her, casually run into her, not that Zinnia had any obvious interest in that happening. Observing the square and the street and listening to the samples of conversation slipping her way in whispers by the wind turned into an occupation of sorts, even if there were no words thrown in the mix this time, just glances and emotions and one feeling she could never find an accurate description for.

Zinnia sat in the sun, her neighbors queuing near the baker’s for some staples, the soldiers from Briggs gathered around a table in the small bar opposite where she was. If she pricked up her ears, she could even make out the words, dancing in midair like dust waiting to meet her skin.

She closed her eyes and felt the breeze around her, the individual sounds leaving the soldier’s mouths, grasping at straws till they found her to cling to.

“You know, one time… one time she had me staying all night to do the dishes and then when she saw me in the morning she sent me off to bed. She’s _awesome_ ,” one of the younger men was saying. At least from this distance he did look comparatively younger, his face shone a little more enthusiastically and he gave the impression that being afraid was not in his league.

Zinnia sat up straighter at the mention of that ‘she’. So much blue, so many uses of ‘she’ all alluding to the same person. Her heart fluttered in her chest, whispering carefully the words she hadn’t dared write down in a while.

_Why do I always find her in words, even if they’re not mine?_ she thought.

“Your concept of awesome is… worrying, Austin.”

“I’m telling you,” he said. “I am telling you. You got nothing to fear.”

“Yes, you. And… everything else.” Austin’s friend sighed.

Zinnia imagined they were talking about life at the fort under the rule of the Ice Queen, about times of war. No Drachman had managed to cross the border yet, or at least Iver hadn’t heard otherwise. The wall stood.

Some new recruits from Central had been sent north in the past few days to help keep Briggs as tightly woven as it was. Maybe this conversation had spun that way, a veteran of the north reassuring a friend who used to work at Central that this wasn’t so bad. Zinnia almost smiled at the thought.

_Not that bad, indeed…_

“Come on, nothing bad’s going to happen,” Austin said. “If anything, we’ll have to stop an invasion.”

“Yeah, I bet it’s our boss who makes the liaison between ‘invasion’ and ‘nothing bad is going to happen’.”

Austin’s eyes opened so widely Zinnia thought his head would explode from the strain.

“Do. Not. Ever. Under any circumstances. Call. Her. Boss,” he said, looking around where they were in case the aforementioned was in their vicinity.

Zinnia couldn’t help but laugh out loud this time. Because Olivier Armstrong did look the type to say an invasion is no big deal until it’s completed and she wouldn’t let her men be overpowered in battle. Also, she was too dignified for the title of ‘boss’. Candie, in her small bookshop, would embrace that title, joke with Zinnia about it. Olivier would insist it dishonored the ancient tradition they upheld in the north.

The two men quickly turned their face towards Zinnia, who despite herself kept giggling. When she saw them, she bit her lip and tried to look inconspicuous, probably failing. After a few seconds, they desisted and she could breathe again.

Dramatically, Austin’s friend asked, continuing the conversation: “And why not?”

“There are… stories. Captain Buccaneer tells them sometimes. Of… the war. He is the only one who called her that and survived. That right is reserved to him now.”

“For the love of—Austin, what the fuck’s happened to you? I don’t see you for, what?, three months? And now you look like a man living a conspiracy theory.”

“I’m telling you. That woman…” Zinnia saw the spark of admiration in the young man’s eyes. He was far younger than her, he still harbored hope of a better life in his gaze instead of mindlessly chasing the shadow of one. “I wouldn’t be surprised if literal hundreds of books were written about her in the future.”

“I’m honestly scared right now. Honestly. You need sun, and… I don’t know, wine. And you need to come back to the real world, huh? I swear, I don’t even know anymore why I decided it was going to be a good idea to join the military… You’re all nuts. I’m the only sane one.”

Austin patted his friend’s shoulder. “Won’t last long. I was just the same. Soon you’ll see the light.” He had a ridiculous grin on his face, like that of a man who has seen into the future and holds knowledge of what is to come, aware that it is far better than the other person fears.

“What light??? The windows on that wall are small as hell!”

“God, I forgot how you Central people are.”

“AUSTIN?????? Have you forgotten already you’re from Central as well???”

But Austin just smiled a sly smile.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I’m just kidding.”

Zinnia, on the other hand, shook her head and smirked. Maybe this Austin boy had once had the look of a Central dog, his leash going all the way back to his rightful owner, the Führer, but not anymore. His eyes had been opened by the cold wind of the northern grounds and the iron grip of his fearless general on her sword to defend him and every other men in Briggs if need be.

He had tasted the freedom of a northern cage, and now he knew, like many others before him, how to turn the key and escape the prison to fully merge with the land and its people, now no longer as an exile from the capitol but as a man from Briggs.

Funny how that turned out. The dullest of men came from Central and left the fort weeks later to come to Iver looking like different people. Zinnia sighed.

_Is that what happened to their Ice Queen? Did she freeze over in the winter when she first came?_ she thought. _Has anyone succeeded in thawing her since? Where does she belong now, in her own mind? Is she a woman of the north, or does she still miss home?_

Despite their fair complexion, the Armstrong family had never settled down anywhere near the north, as far as Zinnia knew. Their Amestrian roots kept them safe and sound somewhere crowded and shielded and wealthy, not a tiny town in a province as large as the others but twice as vacant. Zinnia wondered if their home was still Olivier’s home or if, like herself, she’d long since stopped trying to call it so.

A while after the men from Briggs left, she was still sitting there. She didn’t move until the sun began to decline in the purple sky. Its blue-ish hues helped her face the reality of waiting. Because she had been doing that for hours, alone in a square full of people, holding on to the smallest of clues in case they led to what she so thirstily awaited.

Zinnia knew now in her heart, as much as it hurt, that Olivier was not coming today. That was how she knew to give up. 

* * *

 

_“You came,” Dew said, a giant smile on her face. Winter had looked good on her, dressed in coats and gray dresses and black tights. Zinnia put two tentative arms around her, circling Dew’s petite body and pressing her chest against hers. She didn’t want the heartbeat beneath it, just to know it was there was enough. “You came, I’m so glad you came…”_

_Dew giggled, Zinnia cried. Dew didn’t know, would never know, how hard it had been to get out of bed that morning, to drag herself across the town and knock on the door of a house that Zinnia now knew another person might open for her instead of her friend._

_“I’ve found someone!” Dew had said days ago. “I want you to meet them.”_

_And Zinnia had dressed pretty, just in case. If the world was cruel and cold and unforgiving, then perhaps for once it might turn things around and bring a wave of absolute disaster over to Dew’s life only to reward her with the reassurance of an old friend turned lover._

_Zinnia had come. She rested her chin on Dew’s shoulder and held her closer, just a little closer, not hard enough to make her scared or suspicious or uncomfortable. Zinnia hid her face in that hug while Dew finally poured the last of her secrets—all of them lovely and perfectly scented, like she was—over Zinnia’s bare neck._

_“Of course I came,” she said in a smaller voice than she’d meant. “I can’t believe you’ve finally done it. You’re finally there…”_

_Months and years of searching and now Dew was one of those people who fit in somewhere, whose fingers laced perfectly with someone else’s. Her fingers would now be held by a different hand, her ears gifted with words coming from a different mouth, her lips kissed by someone who’d had better tact in courtship._

_Zinnia broke the hug first and forced a smile out of her. For her, for Dew. For the life they’d both wanted that Dew had never known Zinnia wanted with her, and for the life Dew would finally have now._

_Zinnia held her hands in hers._

_“I’m so happy you’re happy.”_

Of course I came, _she’d thought to herself as Dew let her in to meet her new beloved._ This might kill me but I’ll gladly die in exchange for the happiness you wanted.

 

It’d never killed Zinnia, after all. And sometimes she wondered, was Dew unhappy because of that? Did that kind of promise still stand after it became clear one part of the deal would always remain impossible to be true to?

_Of course I came_ , Zinnia had thought. _I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I'm just one chapter away from posting the second arc of this crazy fic ghfdjkfvghfud, but there's no turning back now, so here we go XD


	18. The winter pact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus commences the last chapter of this first arc... What awaits in the next arc, you'll ask? (Well, 14 more chapters, so far, and... things XD many things). Winter, it seems, is truly coming.

Candie hugged her with goodbye at the tip of her hands. She wasn’t imposing her usual womanly wisdom on her, or being the mother she felt Zinnia had never had. It was just… a hug that lasted a little too long, barely even crossing the line of acceptable. Not tight, not uncomfortable, but sorrowful. A hug that could be witnessed on every train stop in the country.

But fall hadn’t fallen upon the north yet, and Candie’s bookshop was thriving, and Candie should’ve had no reason to hug her goodbye like this.

Yet Zinnia said nothing. She smiled like she did every Friday, and hugged her boss and walked to the bakery. Candie waved goodbye at her from the door.

She worked silently today. Charlie barely seemed bothered by the lack of their usual banter. If he was curious as to why she remained moody and kept on looking out of the window, he didn’t pry. Sometimes people just picked up on this sort of stuff and knew it was wise to let her have some space.

There was no dark blue in the streets today, no matter how many times she looked out of the door just to check. An annoying gust of wind had possessed the grounds surrounding the town and now the streets were open channels for it to push through.

When she left, the sky was already getting dark around the edges. So much for long warm summers with sunlight till late. She hadn’t had a taste of the north before, having settled in in the midst of a hot bout of spring, and this was her first contact with the circumstances that wouldn’t just follow but in crescendo take over the warmer seasons.

The wind pushed her in the opposite direction she wanted to go, but for tonight she didn’t mind. She felt she’d been awake far longer than she really had.

Two jobs, one life, many worries, many regrets. And lately, the hovering memory of a girl with golden hair that had found something better. Everybody seemed to always find that ‘something’ that eclipsed everything else. Just not her. And she’d crossed an entire country looking to find it at last.

The past rubbed against her chest, coiling around her body like a hungry snake that’s ready to wait to annihilate its food completely. Hunting at its best, yet she resisted being a meek prey.

_A memory can’t hurt me_ _,_ Zinnia told herself, wrapping herself up in her jacket. Then why did it have the power to, after so long? What significance could Dew have in her life now? Who was she but a shadow of an ancient want?

Perhaps it was the memory of the ‘what if’ and its reincarnation in the present that had dug itself into Zinnia’s heart, a thorn of a different kind that she wasn’t ready to admit was there yet.

Wanting felt like wasting away when the object of your desires was unattainable in every sense of the word. Even if Zinnia did something to become involved in the lives of who she’d once been devoted to, that didn’t guarantee she’d be granted access.

Her silence had been turned against her. And even if it was a double-edged sword, Zinnia didn’t feel ready for retaliation.

She went home for the weekend, the silence following her around the house like her own shadow did, quiet and pleasant but still lurking. Zinnia didn’t leave until Monday, and by the time she felt a little more confident in shaking this silence off, the choice to speak again and rejoin society had been abruptly taken from her.

Sleep-addled, she dragged herself out of bed, ate without appetite, and dressed warmly to face the cooler streets of Iver to go to work. She found them emptier than usual. Not a soul walked on them, no one was exiting their establishments or their homes. No one queued at the butchery. No door was open.

“Weird…” she muttered under her breath.

It was the first day of autumn.

She stood before Candie’s bookstore for a couple of minutes. _This_ was weird, her boss not being in already. The door was locked, the windows were shut, and when Zinnia peeked in, nobody was inside. It was like the entire town had been frozen in place and left devoid of its inhabitants but for one.

Sweating a little in spite of the morning chill, she knocked at the door. But she received no answer.

She all but ran to the bakery and did the same. Nobody opened the door. She ran and ran to knock at the doors of her neighbors, her friends, her bosses. All she found was silence and all she was met with was isolation.

Zinnia fell on her knees where she stood, feeling like the protagonist of one of her childhood nightmares. She tried to scream but found no voice to do it with.

They’d all gone, they’d all disappeared out of nowhere leaving no trace behind, and yet here she was, once again set apart from Iver’s crowds by something she had no control over.

When she rose again, legs shaking a little, she walked back home. Her heart sank when she saw how little food she had left. She was furious with herself for not having bought more before.

She sat by the phone, and almost cried at the frustration of not knowing any phone number from people around here. But of course, before, she’d had no need for them, she could just go over to their houses.

She hung up the phone and got back into bed, squeezing her eyes shut. Maybe if she fell asleep, when she woke up she’d be back to the reality she’d grown to understand and love and this would just be a nightmare to be forgotten. Just a temporary prison she’d gotten free of.

Her food lasted until it didn’t. By then, Zinnia had already broken into the main shops and hurdled herself up at home under a few layers of old smelly blankets she’d grabbed out of the wardrobe.

The plan was to hold on there for an entire two seasons, or until someone came back. But deep down she knew nobody would return till the, so far, nonexistent ice melted in spring. This had just been… another northern tradition she’d missed and had found out about too late. Of course such a small town would have a backup plan to survive for so many months in the cold. When she thought about it, the second the elements decided it was time to unleash hell upon the north, there was no way on earth towns like this one wouldn’t get buried under the snow.

For now, under the thick covers and in her warmest clothes, Zinnia could get by. She toured the surroundings of Iver, looking to find Southy’s cattle in the distance, but the old man was gone, and so were his cows. When the last of the food ran out, she’d starve. Or she’d have to hunt. She had her knives, but those were meant to be… for recreational throwing, not for life sustenance.

After a few days, she panicked, alone at home, eating dry food and hiding from the first gusts of freezing wind coming down from the mountains.

She called Anthony.

“You have to help me, I don’t know what to do,” she said, before he even said a meek hi after weeks of zero communication.

He must’ve understood this was no trifle matter, because he didn’t press any normal beginning of a conversation.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m just… the entire town left me behind. There’s no one anywhere, even the animals are gone. And it’s cold. It’s getting colder by the week and…” She sniffed her tears in before they were shed. “I don’t know what to do…” she repeated in a small voice.

“What do _I_ do? How can I help?” he said at first. Then he began spitting ideas out like the more he had the better use she’d be able to make of them. “Do you think you could walk to the train station and get on a train?”

She definitely had the money, now that she had no post office to send it to her family from.

“That’s _miles_ away from here.”

“Zinnia,” he said, serious, “you’re too far away. You understand I can’t— _we_ can’t get to you, right? You need to do this alone.”

_Real fucking helpful_ , she thought. But he _was_ trying to help. She told that to herself again and again, trying to suppress her anger. It would be misdirected at him if she did aim it.

“No, I know, I just—what the fuck am I supposed to do in this situation?”

Silence.

“How close are you to Briggs?”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered, panicking again. It wasn’t like she hadn’t contemplated the option, if briefly. How many defeats would that single act be equal to? Would her face fall from embarrassment when the doors of Briggs opened to let her in, if they ever did? “When the soldiers come they take horses with them, so it has to be a while.”

“Farther than North City?”

The numbers cross-faded in Zinnia’s head. She wanted to just urge her brain to find the answers but all she remembered from her trips to and back from North City was that they were always too long. And that was not helpful.

“ _I don’t know_.”

“Then…” Anthony said, thinking. “Then get a good coat and some food and find shelter. And call from time to time if the line holds so we know you’re still alive, okay?”

His voice had been so sweet at that that she couldn’t help but giggle a little. She even overlooked the ‘we’. When had it been ‘we’ in Anthony’s speech?

“You’re stubborn, so don’t give up. I’ll… I’ll try and get hold of North City’s command center or something, get a rescue team for you, okay?”

Silence fell again. She could hear her own agitated breath disrupting it.

He was going to help her. It was going to be fine. North Command would send help, and she’d be out of there, she’d go where the rest of Iver had gone.

“Anthony?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. It’s stupid to say this now—or at all—but I am. I wish things had worked out better.”

Zinnia had said that so quickly, it took her friend a while to understand what words had been uttered separately.

“They worked out fine. I’m glad… I’m glad you can call me about this kind of stuff, after all this time.”

“Me too,” she whispered. But really, she was begging for her life, not apologizing. She hated herself for it. She hated that she was doing this out of fear. Hadn’t she had years to feel remorse for having stopped loving him? Hadn’t she thought time and time again and he had nothing to forgive her for because it hadn’t been anyone’s fault? “I can do this.”

“You can. Don’t freeze your butt off,” he said, then he hung up. Because he wasn’t in this room with her, because his ‘we’ was a fluke, as always. _He just wants my emotions to feed on them, to feel better when he gives me back the bones._

Zinnia sat alone in her deserted living room and wept silent tears, thinking, _I shouldn’t have called him._  

* * *

 

Zinnia found thick gloves and thicker coats, she found stockings and jumpers, and she put them all on and walked out to the bright light of the day, knife in her hand.

Her heart still ached at the thought of this, still shouted at her to get back inside and just hope to get rescued. But days had gone by and no one had come for her—no one would come—and her meat rations were soon to run out. She’d been left with no choice but to do this.

After a few hours in the village’s surroundings, when she returned she did so with a few rabbits and tree bark to stockpile. She wouldn’t freeze in the cold that the blue mornings in the mountains already threatened her with, she wouldn’t starve either. 

* * *

 

The day she meant to call Anthony again, the line was dead. But it didn’t matter. No one had come, no one was coming. Zinnia alone would pull this off for the life of her. Sometimes she heard the town creak in its silence, the pipes slowly thaw from the night’s mild frost, and she lay in bed, eyes wide open, unable to sleep. Some days she still felt like the final girl of a terribly slow and meaningless nightmare. But weren’t all nightmares meant to terrorize you into waking up? 

* * *

 

When the true cold of the north finally came, without a warning and without a thought for the world it was going to devastate, Zinnia felt it. Her eyelashes weighted twice as much as usual, and the simple fact of sitting up on her fortress of a bed took more effort, more energy.

She looked out of the window and for the first time in months she saw the colors of winter tainting Iver. The sky had been painted a terrifying shade of dark gray, specs of slightly lighter clouds clogging up like fog in the streets, and little snowflakes fell with the wind in messy spirals. From the relative heat of her room, of her house, Zinnia could watch nature unfurl before her and not fear it.

Sooner than later, though, she would have to gather her courage and face it to feed herself. Sooner than later, the timid feeling of safety she’d built here in the past few days would be swallowed by the advance of a winter that still wasn’t so. 

* * *

 

The fort buoyed in warmth. Olivier’s nose wrinkled when she felt it. She would have killed for a little bit of the temperature outdoors to seep in there, and contented herself with having it for a little while today when she and her men left to do the last sweep of summer. A summer that, thankfully, was done as last.

The real deal would still take a few months to come, but she gave silent thanks that the worst of the heat was over. After so long, she’d rather gotten used to the unforgiving cold, and she welcomed it.

“General,” said Buccaneer when he got both his sturdy black horse and her own out of the stables. Today, she’d had to pay momentary attention to the last tank prototype, a much better and advanced version than the last she’d agreed to supervise, and he’d made her the favor of fetching a ride while she tended to other matters.

“Miles?” she asked. The major was supposed to be coming with them.

Buccaneer rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Just about getting done saddling up,” he said.

“What could possibly take so long?” she mumbled, and got on her horse, having Buccaneer follow a few seconds after, as if he’d been waiting for orders.

A couple of minutes later, Miles came riding towards them.

“Took you long enough,” Olivier grumbled. “Ready now, gentlemen?”

They both nodded and followed her as the gate was hoisted open.

The feel of the blizzard’s winds in her face meant confirmation that winter would soon be upon them all, and knowing this was sweeter to her than anything in the world.

Finally, she would battle Drachma in her own terms. Ice and fire and a quiet battlefield where her enemies’ screams for mercy would be louder than her cannons.

The world was definitely now devoid of human sound as they marched towards the town she thought evacuated by now. By this time of year, in this weather, Iver would certainly be locked under seven keys.

She sighed imperceptibly to her second in command.

She knew what this year’s migrations meant, other than the obvious, and in the busyness of the last times, she’d succeeded in forbidding herself from thinking about it.

Iver evacuated all its life forms to North City, where surviving six months of moderate to intense cold was plausible and more comfortable than in a half a square-mile town in the middle of nowhere. It was logical and it was tradition, and it was better this way. It gave her the perfect excuse to do her job and _focus._

Olivier rolled her eyes when she heard the beautiful autumn silence being pierced by Buccaneer’s laughter a few steps behind her.

_There they go being excitable little punks again…_ she thought. Buccaneer was probably telling stories, in his loud voice, and Miles was being extra polite and laughing as gently as he could not to make his laughter audible miles away from their position.

“Ah, there it is,” Miles said after a while when he spotted the town. “Been a while since I came here.”

“He! You work too much,” Buccaneer said. “They still serve a terrific beef stew—”

“Leave the chitchat for later,” Olivier ordered all of a sudden. “We’ve a job to do.”

She dug her heels onto her horse’s side, galloping away from the two men, who looked at each other in disbelief as she became smaller and smaller in the white distance.

“What’s up with her?” Buccaneer asked.

Miles shrugged.

“Come on,” he only said, and they followed her trail.

Olivier knew their job here couldn’t be simpler. Tour around to see that everything had been properly sealed, that nobody had been accidentally left behind (which had never happened in all the years she’d been up north), and consider the town out of bounds until spring, when the first to return would brave up the tender season through its newly born rays of sunlight.

She knew it didn’t take three people to carry this task out, least of all _the presence of a general._ But she’d wanted to be here. To make _sure_ things were working out as they should this time of the year. Bringing Miles and Buccaneer along in the end just amounted to a way of covering her tracks, and she would really appreciate it if they kept their mouths shut until they got back. The sooner they checked everything was in order, the sooner this mood of hers would disappear, like it should’ve days, almost weeks, ago.

_You’re a fool, woman,_ said the little annoying voice in the back of her head. _What do you hope to find here but snow and stone?_

Her horse’s hooves clacked gently against the cobblestone of the main street. The space didn’t look the same it used to without the yellow light of the sun and the scent of flowers. And the flowers themselves. Now it just oozed out coldness and loneliness like a wound oozes blood.

Olivier shivered atop her horse. So much for wanting some chilly weather.

She ventured into one of the minor streets, following no specific directions, and not really paying attention to the buildings around her. It all looked fine to her.

It all looked abandoned, just like it had to.

Then she saw a glass window shattered in one of the small shops.

“Now, this is unusual,” she muttered to herself.

She kept going, because she wanted to believe that sometimes the cold was capable of scratching cracks into glass, even in the earliest stages of autumn. She wanted to believe her chest wasn’t heaving with hope right this second. She didn’t harbor hope, she either knew she was going to win or she prepared for a bloodier battle than expected.

Then, reality overcame any hope she might’ve and might’ve not had.

There was light behind a door, there was light in the window next to it.

A yellow-painted house, its color striking against the monochromatic feel of the day.

Olivier dismounted, her mouth dry.

This was _not_ going according to plan.

She heard Miles and Buccaneer approaching from nearby streets. She waited until their horses had stopped by her side.

“There’s someone in there,” Miles spoke, unable to believe it. But she’d needed him to say it, because that meant she wasn’t the one making it up with her devious mind, that meant it was real and whoever was inside needed their help, or their reprimand.

Perhaps both. Olivier was certainly in the best of moods for both.

“Stay put,” she told both men as she walked to the door.

She kicked it open and immediately heard a scream that she followed into the belly of the house. She’d never seen this many blankets in her life. Animal skin hung from the coatrack, dozens of food wrappings were on the hallway.

Her entire body froze on the spot when she saw… _her._

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” she asked out loud to the girl in the most ridiculous of coats that was staring at her in utmost fear in the living room of the house.

“General?” the girl muttered. Her lips were a little blue, and she was shivering slightly, even so aptly dressed to withstand the cold.

_If she came from the city, no wonder she’s not used to it…_ Olivier thought. But… was this a swell of pity going through her? Why was she supposed to care? Who was dumb enough to be left behind in a migration?

“Flower girl…” she muttered to herself, eyes wide open. Was she _dreaming_ this? Had she really made this reality manifest itself through sheer will?

“Are you… are you real?” Zinnia asked, blinking, rubbing her eyes, perhaps trying to see if that would whisk the taller woman out of there the same way she’d come. Yet nothing of the sort happened.

The opposite did. Footsteps creaking against the floor, Olivier slowly made her way to the spot where the girl was kneeling, wrapped in coats and blankets, and she stared for a longer time than she’d meant to.

In this light, the defiant personality that had confronted her over and over during the past spring and summer seemed to have melted and given way to an adoration that presented itself raw through fear.

That girl was afraid, alone and afraid, and Olivier knew. And if she was in her right mind, she’d just call the authorities at North City and have them take her there, because she technically was their jurisdiction now that Iver was no man’s land. But Olivier kept standing there like the idiot that she felt she was.

She heard Buccaneer’s tentative question from the door:

“Boss? What do we do?”

And it snapped her alert at once. No more doubts, no more weakness. She was the Northern Wall of Briggs, winter bowed to her, not the other way around.

She bent over a little, and her hand didn’t shake when she offered it to the flower girl—now a withering, ice-covered summer flower—and her voice embodied a firmness she had honed for years.

“Come to the fort with me,” Olivier said without answering the girl’s question. _I’m here, I’m real, and—_ The last part of that interrupted thought, she spoke out loud: “I’m not going to let you freeze.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry for the lack of dialogue in this chapter, this was mostly about moving the action forward a little XD trust me, I've been writing towards 'come to the fort with me' since early May - and this was written in late July, so that's almost three months of feels I couldn't babble about and the feels continue even now, I must say)


	19. In the nude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Arc II commences!

_Is she an angel_ _?_ Zinnia thought when she walked outside, where three horses and two men were waiting for her right by the house. Olivier helped her up on one of the animals, and wrapped her hands around her once they were both settled to make sure she didn’t fall once they started moving.

She was Zinnia’s savior angel.

It had gotten too cold to hunt, too cold to do anything but wait it all out, and Olivier had come to save her, to get her out of there. Anthony hadn’t done shit, despite his promises; a woman in a brown horse had, her blue eyes only icy in appearance. A woman who was kind and good and beautiful, standing there with the resilience of an entire planet against the puny wind. Zinnia didn’t lean against the body behind her, because she feared she’d have to jump away from nerves if she did. Instead, she focused on the horse and keeping her balance on it, not the hands holding her there. The two men by their side made no comment, content with sharing brief looks from time to time during the way back to the fort.

They rode in the blizzard. It seemed to be closing in on them, all visibility impaired by the acid grayness around them and the little occasional spurts of white that Zinnia wasn’t sure were snowflakes. It was too soon for snow. Or perhaps Zinnia was just too tired to keep her eyes open and watch the cloudy curtains of nature supersede one another. Eventually, all which she was only half-aware of gave way to a man-made structure that belonged to legend as much as it did on human grounds.

Fort Briggs. Tons and tons of metal melted together into the wall that had kept Drachma from invading for years on end.

_This is her,_ Zinnia thought feebly. _This is her, this is her, this is her…_ The wall she’d been nicknamed after. But the notorious Wall of Briggs didn’t seem very preoccupied with keeping Drachma at bay at the moment, or with anything that didn’t entail keeping Zinnia from sliding off onto the damp soil surrounding the mountains.

Tiny orange lights shone through the gray fog, unmoving. Zinnia made an effort and tried to stay alert. She still felt like a woman walking barefoot in a dream, no matter if Olivier had reassured already that this was the furthest thing from one.

Still, Zinnia was firm on the belief that she must have fallen asleep while she prepared for the next hunt, there was no other plausible explanation. This would never be happening in real life, neither women on this brown horse would allow it. Her fingertips tingled. She was holding just the wind in them. The horse’s reins were tucked into Olivier’s hands, also somewhat pressed against Zinnia’s stomach. That, of course, did not help with the tingling slowly moving up her arms and chest and down to her stomach, where it stayed as dream static.

She wished for rain, so that the cold drops falling from the sky would finally wake her up. So that this beautiful fabrication of hers would just end, as all things had to. Sometimes one’s own fantasies were harder to maintain than just facing the heart-breaking reality of life. It hurt less to survive the cold than entertain something that would never make sense outside of the walls of a dream.

The main entrance gate was already wide open for them when they finally arrived to the very feet of the wall. Once inside, Zinnia looked up at the ceiling and her mouth fell. She had just been engulfed by a titanic beast of iron, steel, and copper.

She licked her lips, bit the lower one till she peeled a bit of skin off and it bled against her tongue. _This just has to be a dream, I can’t be here._ But the pain of the exposed lip gave her away. So did the brown and dark yellow colors of the fort wrapping around her in a comforting embrace. Even the scents spiraling in the air murmured a welcome worded just for her. _I can’t be here_ , she kept repeating, fighting it.

“It’s… warm,” she mumbled to herself.

She felt Olivier tense her muscles behind her in a bout of slightly strained laughter.

“That, it is.”

Zinnia was in the literal belly of the beast. And she wouldn’t have to endure the cold anymore. If this was indeed a dream, it had been concocted to bittersweet perfection. Even the feeling of absurd immensity she felt in the center of her being was molding to how her imagination had dared picture it. Her eyes filled with unwanted tears.

But she couldn’t cry them right now. Olivier dismounted first, then offered her a strong hand in order to help her do the same, and Zinnia did without question.

“General, I’ll go get everything ready to take inventory,” Miles said.

Buccaneer had already given his horse to someone else and was boisterously making his way in, removing layer upon layer of clothing with every step that he took. He smacked the back of one of his old pals, Smith, in what looked like a friendly gesture, his voice the loudest thing in a place where engine roars were a common occurrence.

Miles blinked at Olivier. She was irresponsive, standing by the girl as if moving one step further from her would mean she’d crumble in front of them all. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the general had placed a hand on the girl’s waist to keep her upright, and he _should’ve_ been.

“Sir?” he insisted. Yet he didn’t press it anymore. He didn’t ask the real questions he wanted to, because it made no sense to now. And he had no reason to pry so directly in matters that did in no way concern him:

A woman lost in the town Olivier had so often come back from sporting a different air and hiding pages upon pages of poetic prose.

_Is this woman the writer of those letters?_ Miles wanted to ask. _Is that why she’s not on a train south right now?_

“Yes. Inventory.” Olivier answered firmly. Her eyes, though, never met his. “Do that. Wait for me. I’ll…” Olivier’s gaze fixated on the woman next to her, who hadn’t moved from the spot where she’d landed and seemed to be analyzing every detail of the ceiling; leaking pipes and lines that couldn’t possibly interest her so much.

“Get her to Doc, just in case,” he added. The girl definitely presented some dreaminess, and naturally Miles wondered about her state, but she had been shivering during the ride, and her mental fogginess seemed to be attributed more to the shock of being here after an unexpected rescue than having had her body temperature drop alarmingly.

Zinnia had to lean on Olivier’s horse for a second, as if she meant to mark Miles’s words.

“What?” Olivier said to Miles, not having caught what he’d said. She still wasn’t looking his way. She wasn’t looking _any_ way. He had no idea how to even begin to explain how strange that was, to watch the embodiment of resilience and pride drift away in his presence to places where no one could follow.

He shook his head, more to himself than to her, and took his horse by the reins.

“I’d get her checked up, just in case,” he repeated. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He had the strange feeling that finding a stray lady in town wasn’t the only thing that was off today, but it wasn’t any of his business, so he just walked away. Another mystery, he thought. Briggs would feed off of it soon enough.

“Are you alright?” Olivier asked Zinnia when Miles and his blurry words were gone for good. The girl stood next to her, and for the first time in months, Olivier realized just how tiny she was. Her frame occupied so little space in comparison with herself, even clothed as thickly as she was.

Her eyes, though, shone with more presence than her body would have made Olivier believe. Gently, they came down from the ceilings to look at her, as if she hadn’t listened to the question.

“I don’t want to have you fainting all over the place,” Olivier said.

Zinnia frowned.

“I’m okay. I can walk,” she said. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Where—where would we hypothetically be walking to, exactly?”

“The fort’s doctor.”

“You guys have a doctor?”

Olivier almost face-palmed.

“Yes, we do. Come on.”

She turned her back on Zinnia to lead the way down to the medical room. As she walked, she channeled her training more than she ever had before, even when she’d had to travel all the way to Drachma’s heart to negotiate for a cease fire.

This called for less strict measures, but she still needed to look regal and composed and not act like the shaky mess she felt her entire being had devolved into. A wall of ice melting, that would give the men something to talk about.

Her pace quickened at the thought.

_Maybe I’m dreaming and I never woke up this morning,_ she thought. This couldn’t be happening to her. A woman lost in the fall’s first innocuous blizzard, shivering to hell and back, and Olivier Armstrong had lost her way.

Not literally, of course. Her sense of direction was intact, just like her other senses weren’t. How could someone’s footsteps echo so loud in the corridors, how could someone’s fucking scent be invading the entirety of the fort without having even properly entered it yet?

Who would Olivier have to sell her soul to so this would stop? She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Her heart pounded rather than just acclimated to her pace, and every beat hurt a little.

_What am I doing?_ That same heart yelled at her in desperation _._

How could she have let this happen? Why hadn’t she sent for someone else today to go check the town was empty? Someone else would’ve done the bare minimum and it would have been a done deal before nightfall. Perhaps Briggs would’ve had to supply transport, but their involvement would have ended there. And now she’d be sitting somewhere with Miles taking inventory and sipping a cup of something warm.

But no—now, the girl was under their care. For as long as Olivier decided. And she hesitated as to what to decide.

_What the fuck am I going to do?,_ she asked her heart in return.

When she opened her eyes again, she realized she’d been stomping rather quickly. For a second or two, she stopped on her way, her face half-turned to the girl.

“Keep up,” Olivier ordered, and kept moving—but only after she’d given Zinnia enough time to catch up. In a labyrinthine environment such as this, it really wouldn’t help Briggs’ reputation to have their rescued snowflake getting lost right under their noses.

It took an eon and a half of elongated seconds to get to the right aisle, the medical area of the fort, the heart of their health. Olivier didn’t fear for the girl’s health, especially not after these past few minutes during which she’d followed silently and without having to stop for rest. But she did fear for her own at this point. It had never been this bad, it had never been… irrepressible.

Whatever was happening within her, it couldn’t be anything good. She felt attuned to stimuli her five senses shouldn’t be able to perceive. Worse even, she felt as if they were whispering to let go, to let them all entice her in spirals until she forgot her own name and her occupation.

As if General Armstrong would ever allow that to happen. As if she was anything more than just her name and the reputation her job had bestowed upon her.

And thus, as she pushed the heavy door open, Olivier was about to explode. Because, deep in her heart, she knew she’d never been just a title.

“General,” the doctor said one he’d spotted her, raising both eyebrows. “Everything alright?” It wasn’t that usual to have Olivier come down here, when the wounded among their numbers were few and she soldiered through anything that might keep another person bed-bound.

“Found a lost sheep in the blizzard,” Olivier said simply.

_Sheep?_ Zinnia thought to herself, but she said nothing. She felt too out of place, too tired, too hungry. And she trusted none of these people with that information.

“Let’s take a look, then,” the doctor said, moving from behind the tiny desk in the room, and standing, hands on hips.

Olivier waited until Zinnia understood she was supposed to sit down on the gurney next to the doctor’s desk, and then leaned slowly against said desk like it was her own upstairs.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked. “Cold?”

“Not anymore,” Zinnia said, shaking her head. Little strands of brown hair fell from behind her ears. “This place is like an oven.”

The doctor laughed, feeling for the outside of Zinnia’s clothes and check if they were wet or frozen over.

“Okay, this is good. No outer wetness is good. Is it cold or damp beneath the first layer or two?” the doctor said. When Zinnia shook her head again, he added: “You can take ’em off if you want to.” He laughed. “Don’t want you to boil to death.”

Olivier looked away at the speed of light when she saw the first sign of Zinnia’s coat being unbuttoned in her presence. She, the second most unashamed person in this fort aside from Buccaneer, _sheering away from this?_

She considered walking out of the room—to give the girl privacy, _of course_ —, but for some reason she couldn’t move from where she was until the doctor had helped Zinnia remove all outer wear and she’d been stripped to her dress and tights. Even as he continued to examine her for symptoms of mild hypothermia, Olivier refused to even take a full deep breath. At this rate, she’d die of self-inflicted asphyxiation and she’d be remembered as an idiot instead of as a force of nature Central feared reckoning with.

“Where’d you fish her out of, General?” the doctor asked, then, saving her from her own mind.

It was strange to him, if not something else entirely, that Olivier wasn’t saying something related to the trip to the town or something about the health of this kid. Despite not being a chatterbox, exactly, she knew her words had weight, and she normally mastered using them in the presence of her people.

“Iver,” she replied from the desk, still not looking even if she could have. “Huddling up in some house.”

The doctor guffawed for a few seconds and then shrugged.

“Someone has to be the first.” He turned to Zinnia now. The look in his eyes made Zinnia realize how _seen_ she was in this place, how they perceived her as shiny and new, and therefore easily picked out of the crowd. “I don’t know how long you spend there on your own but…” He understood, too, that the experience she’d lived through didn’t come without a cost, and she was grateful when he left the sentence inconclusive. Her mouth suddenly ran dry. “For now, a change of clothes and a few days by the heater will do you good, yeah? A shower and some nice food, too.”

“And then what?” Zinnia asked before she could think of what to say, explicitly not looking at Olivier either. “You dump me back?”

“Nobody’ll dump you anywhere,” the doctor reassured her in an actual doctor-like tone, without all of the previous hints of amusement. “Winters here are long and harsh. You might as well stay.”

Finally, Olivier rose from her slumber, but she didn’t add anything to what the doctor had said.

“After how long can she be expected to be back to normal?” she asked. That might just have been the most important question. Now that Zinnia was here, what came next? A furtive stay? Pushing her onto some truck and driving her away into the wilderness?

Probably, if Olivier had a solid mind right now, she would arrange for that.

“You could leave right now if you wanted to, you’re not in danger of dying of hypothermia or anything like that,” the doctor told Zinnia. “But… I’d still advice a few days’ rest, kid.”

“’Kid,’ my _ass…_ ” Zinnia mumbled under her breath.

“It can’t have been easy for you out there, all alone,” he finished, not paying her comment any mind. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard. “Give it a night or two, then you can decide what you want to do.” He looked at Olivier without his usual amusing aura, almost scanning her for what was going to happen. Like _she_ could see into the future…

Zinnia hopped off the gurney and thanked the doctor for his time, then she promptly went through the door, only to turn back around immediately. She’d just realized she had no clue where to go and no autonomy in this place. Her entire heart plummeted down to her feet in dismay.

_I’m going to need someone to take me everywhere…_

Olivier smirked to herself. Zinnia wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the general could read minds. She walked to the shorter woman slowly, waving in dismissal at the doctor.

“Little lost?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Zinnia said.

Olivier walked past her to lead the way again. Their shoulders brushed when she did so, and she deeply regretted everything that had gone down today, back to the first coffee she’d had in the morning. She would blame it all on that coffee, if need be.

“I’ll get you a clean set of clothes first,” Olivier said as softly as she could muster, though. “Then you can shower or write or whatever the hell you do in your free time.”

She cleared her throat, trying to sound serious and composed and _normal._ But none of this applied as ‘just normal’ anymore. A guest. That’s what the flower girl was here, a guest. Someone without any authority or plans in the north, just a girl who couldn’t return to where she’d come from, just a girl Olivier couldn’t simply put back in the cold.

“And tomorrow we’ll have to find you a job. No one stays here for free.” Assuming Zinnia would choose to stay. Assuming Olivier would let her. In two days, she could just put the girl in a car and have Austin or whoever drive her somewhere else. She _could_ do it. And it would be the right thing to do, she knew that much.

Without expecting a reply, Olivier walked faster than she should’ve after that, extra aware that she had a little duckling following her around the place. A place where the men hadn’t seen an outsider in their home for too long, where the rules were clear and this was unprecedented if she got to call it anything.

She had no idea if she should take the girl to the common bunks and just… assign her one of the empty beds. Fifty men slept in each room. Men who were loud and not used to visitors and men who snored and got up to pee a few times at night and woke up early or went to bed late. She couldn’t just leave the girl there. But she also couldn’t strip a colonel, say, of his assigned private dormitory just because of this.

So, as a very last resort and a product of very quick and messy thinking, Olivier took her to her own room.

_Just for a few days,_ she thought. _What does it matter?_

She should’ve known better than to ask herself that. She should’ve anticipated to those ‘few days’ and arrived to the conclusion that either way these four walls would remain forever changed after tonight.

The room was undeniably small. Fit for one individual bed, a tiny desk, and an even tinier private toilet without a shower. She was made awfully aware of that the second she opened the door and let Zinnia go in. The years had left a mark on the walls, which were covered in thin cracks in the concrete, and the last time the floor hadn’t creaked Olivier hadn’t been born yet.

She was made aware that despite her having been living here for years, not a single clue had been left behind that would give the impression she had been sleeping there for so long, in a room that was barely big enough for her and her scant few things. And now, another human being from the outside world, without a single relation to her, was in it, judging the lack of personality and all the little defects in the architecture of the room. A witness of her way of life. And it terrified Olivier to extents she couldn’t ever admit to. She had gotten used to being _seen,_ even partly understood, though the words of this very same woman, but it was another story to stand there and feel the silent scrutiny going through the girl’s mind.

“Whose room is this?” Zinnia asked. She hadn’t spotted a recognizable sign of inhabitance. The desk was bare, the bed perfectly made, the drawers closed. But she had a gut feeling, one that threatened to burst within if she didn’t voice it a little.

“Mine,” Olivier said, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

Zinnia stopped looking at the few pieces of furniture and span around a little to look at her. Her face, showing gratitude and concern, stirred something inside Olivier, who finally stepped inside and remembered why they’d bothered to come to this room in the first place.

“Why would you take me here?” Zinnia muttered.

“There’s nowhere else for you to go at the moment,” Olivier replied, not looking at her. And that much was true, at least. There was nowhere else half as decent where Zinnia could stay.

Olivier distracted herself as she opened the drawers, looking for something specific. After a minute or two, she pulled out one of the newest pieces of clothing she had that she hadn’t used much. Some nights she was so tired, so restless, she fell asleep in her uniform and never really changed into anything more comfortable until morning.

Zinnia wrinkled her entire face when she saw the gray—simple, that was true—dress the other woman was presenting her with. Knee-length, with short sleeves, like what women in prison were made to wear.

“Don’t you have anything a little more… normal?” she asked, but it wasn’t ‘normal’ that she meant, not exactly. _Don’t you have anything that’s not_ yours _?_

“It’s either this or underwear,” Olivier said, immediately realizing that if she stuck to this new proposition and the girl chose the latter option, this wouldn’t benefit her at all.

Zinnia eyed her suspiciously.

“I’m sure the men don’t get skirts,” she pointed out.

“They do, if they want them.” Olivier made furious eye contact. “Do you want overlong pants that will fall off your waist?”

“No,” Zinnia said in a small voice.

“Then just take it.” Then, Olivier grabbed a spare towel from the drawers and exited her own room without waiting for Zinnia. “Come on, I’ll show you to the communal showers. And then to the kitchens. There’s not a lot more here that’ll be of interest to you.”

_And after the kitchens…_ Olivier thought, terror-stricken, and not precisely because of typical fear. _I’ll lead you back here and… and…_

The rest of the walk to that floor’s communal showers took place in silence. Showers, dinner, then bed. And then maybe when Olivier woke up the next morning, none of this would be real, and she could go on spying over the border, sending men out to the world, and tracing lines on maps that weren’t finished.

“This is it,” she announced curtly when they arrived. The door was dented and someone hadn’t done a very good job cleaning all the dust on it. “Here,” she said, handing the towel to Zinnia, who took her sweet time until she grabbed it. “I’ll wait in the corridor.”

“Okay…” Zinnia whispered.

Ever since they’d moved floors again, Zinnia had the feeling that something very heavy had sat down on her chest and had her pinned down to the floor, cutting her blood and air supply. Nothing hurt, but it all throbbed with urgency, as if telling her to get ready for something ominous.

Abruptly, she slammed one hand on the wall before she fell forward. Olivier caught her, her hands fast and hard around her. She cursed in the privacy of her mind, unable to believe this day had been allowed to exist. She’d yanked at the girl so fast, she wouldn’t be surprised if she barfed against a wall right now.

Olivier saw her whole life flashing before her eyes at the thought of a major disaster happening, but she didn’t let go.

“Do you want to sit down?” she asked, thankful that she’d sounded the usual amount of done and not worried, like she’d feared she would.

Zinnia shook her head, eyes closed, and slowly tried to get rid of Olivier’s hands on her. They made for perfectly good hands, very supportive right now. But they belonged to a woman that literally was dangerous grounds.

“I was fine up until two seconds ago.”

Olivier let her go, reluctantly. She looked so fragile, too small for what she was used to. She heavily suspected Zinnia would be blown away like a flower in the wind if left to her own devices for too long like this.

“Well, you’re not fine now,” she grumbled. “I’ll leave you to rest at the room, come on.”

Zinnia shook her head a little too energetically. She still felt a little light-headed, but otherwise alright. Maybe she just needed some time and food, and a good night’s sleep. It’d been a hard couple of days.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” she said, trying to reassure her host, who was looking at her like she was afraid Zinnia would ruin everything just by being there. “Plus, I’m filthy.”

Olivier tried to still her mind at the little, carelessly chosen word. Oh, Buccaneer would laugh, if he’d been able to catch a glimpse of his boss’s mind right now.

They walked in, because at this point, what did it matter? What did anything matter? She just wanted this over with so she could finally let out all the air she’d been holding on and off for the entire day, as if this was any more stressing than facing an entire warring nation.

Olivier motioned for the girl to sit down on the bench near one of the bathtubs, instead of taking her to the shower area.

Zinnia stared at her, wondering if she was serious about this. Plus, Olivier was not moving, or leaving. And she looked about ready to sit down, cross her arms and legs, and glare until Zinnia emerged fully clean— _through_ the whole getting cleaned process.

“I don’t want a death under my command, are we clear? Least of all one by shower,” Olivier explained, not that it made more sense after she had. “So, get in the tub.”

And that’s how Zinnia’s suspicions were confirmed.

_No, no, no, no. No!_ _Under what circumstances is this okay?_

“Are you just going to stand there the whole time?” Zinnia asked, trying to get her voice not to quiver, even if it squealed a little in return. This couldn’t be happening. How quickly had the dream become a nightmare, one of those sticky ones you couldn’t shake off of you the next morning.

“Someone has to stay in case you lose consciousness.” Olivier said, her voice equally high. To say she was panicking would have been an understatement. She did not panic, she evaluated the situation and pushed back any difficult emotion so she would conquer her obstacles in record time. She didn’t just… sit there and sweat like one of the men who came from Central on their first week.

Both women stared at each other, wide-eyed and taking shallow breaths, almost competing to see who would give up and leave the room first.

Zinnia felt okay, okay enough to shower on her own and then propel herself back into a wall for as long as it took to get to where she’d be sleeping. True, her neck felt insufficient enough to hold her head up and her legs were occasionally jelly, especially when she thought about them.

She had to sit down on the bench, breaking the eye contact and therefore losing. _This makes things so much easier,_ she thought past the humiliation. This piled on her like that trip back home had, when she’d had to face everybody from her past life and pretend she didn’t ache to leave them all behind again to hide somewhere quiet and watch life go by as she panicked on her own terms and never anyone else’s.

She just guessed this was a bit of a situation in which she had to panic on someone else’s.

“Close your eyes,” Zinnia mumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut too. She would not be crying today, not for all the wealth in the world. Not in front of the Ice Queen, who would probably reach for her tears and freeze them where they stood, make spears out of them.

“What?” Olivier almost yelled.

“Just close your fucking eyes.”

And Olivier did. For her own good.

Then, Zinnia started undoing the laces of her boots. Next she got rid of the thick tights she’d been wearing. She had to stand up to fully remove them, so she tried to do it on her own and found her knees wouldn’t do their job and keep her upright. She quickly clasped at Olivier for support, and felt immensely grateful when no eyes opened for the spectacle. Olivier held her hand in hers with newly found firmness.

Zinnia’s stomach hurt, not just from hunger or tiredness or whatever was ailing her right now. She felt light-headed enough to collapse right here, where she couldn’t, in front of whom she couldn’t. It would ruin everything, it would land her back in that tiny medical room, and she’d have to withstand judgment and questions, and being naked around more people. People who would look, because they’d have to.

Hands. She felt hands. Olivier’s left holding her steady, and another one hovering behind her back, just in case. _Why? Oh god why_? Zinnia clenched her teeth and silently asked the universe so she wouldn’t have any need for that ‘just in case’.

Olivier would have agreed. She didn’t move, she barely breathed, and her mind was racing. Slowly, in spite of her eyes being closed, she could almost see the fabric slipping down from around the flower girl onto the floor, and Olivier pretended this was something she did everyday, something that was entirely fine.

Because it should be. She was helping someone in need, like she’d been taught in the academy. A soldier helps others first, worries about himself after. But there was nothing in those textbooks and terribly long and sexist lectures about… about sensing another person’s presence right there with you, after years of being surrounded by those who could never make you feel this way. Olivier couldn’t see, but she heard instead, and she _felt_. The tiny little sounds overwhelmed her. Fifteen years… fifteen years since she’d been around a person who was taking her clothes off and Olivier had wanted to be there for it.

So many years kept in the dark, and now that she was made to momentarily inhabit it, she felt bathed in light. Besides, she forced herself to remember, this had _nothing_ to do with how it all had been fifteen years ago.

Now it was just about the help. Not about the naked person. It could never be. She had a job to do, a title to uphold, a reputation.

_Cold as ice, tall as the wall, impregnable_.

But deep beneath that, when the last piece of clothing was shed off of Zinnia, Olivier’s mind gently begged that version of her who remained poised and calm and neutral: _Help me. Please, just help me._

And the Northern Wall of Briggs came to the aid of that young woman who had fled and had abandoned the last ashes of love she’d been allowed to have slip between her fingers.

“I’ve better things to be doing than be here, you know?” she spoke now. But it wasn’t cruel or cold, just… a way to diffuse the tension within her.

Yet not Zinnia’s.

_And a soldier serves, not hinders,_ Olivier told herself. And she felt guilt flood her, because she was doing the latter, not the first.

“I know!” Zinnia said in exasperation.

Her chest was tight and she felt breathless enough that she could faint right here, eyes humid with unshed tears. Her voice came out all shaky. She had one leg over the bathtub now, she just needed to get the other one inside it and it was over.

“Get out and do them,” Zinnia continued. “I’m fine. I can find my way, after, I don’t need a personal guide dog.”

Finally, after both feet had hit the surface of the tub, she let go of Olivier’s hand and cowered behind those small walls of white tile, scared of the moment the other woman would open her eyes. If the general stayed, Zinnia would die of shame and other feelings still to be understood. But if she left… Zinnia would still need someone to guide her around the fort later, no matter what she’d said just now. And neither option comforted her.

Olivier grumbled once more. Her eyes remained closed.

“You’ll get lost,” she finally said, turning her back to the girl so this didn’t get more awkward than it had to be. “I’ll just wait outside. Don’t stand up, don’t fill the tub too much. And call if you feel—” She interrupted herself as she opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and saw the pile of clothes before her. “You know how it works.”

She couldn’t stay here one more minute or she’d faint herself. This weakness was paralyzing and obscure, and the more she tried to go around it, the harder it coiled around _her_.

“Okay,” Zinnia said.

Olivier stomped out of the room as soon as that word was out. Her exhale lasted so long she was almost scared. But she composed herself, standing right by the door in case someone came along for a shower. She wouldn’t have that.

If the girl had almost lost it at the thought of, well, _this,_ would she even be able to articulate a sound if one of Briggs’ tough unbashful men walked through that door, half-naked already.

And a man did approach the door to the showers so suddenly Olivier’s heart almost leapt out of her chest.

“Miles?” she barked at him.

He was almost unrecognizable without his uniform, his hair falling around his face, no goggles, and a towel wrapped around his lower half. This touch of modesty was endearing, she was not ready for any more nakedness today.

“General,” he said. “All the paperwork’s in order, sir. I figured it would take you some time to return, so I thought I might—”

She crossed her arms and glared at him.

“Out of bounds,” she just said, her back against the door, as if she was guarding some precious treasure. A dragon of her own kind.

“What the hell?” Miles said at first, confused. “Since when is an entire shower facility cleared like this?”

But her hesitance during a split second was his answer. There was only one reason why Olivier would stand on this side of this door, and that reason had ridden all the way from Iver with the two of them and Buccaneer.

“Since now,” she finally said. “Move it. Move it or wait your turn.”

Miles studied her for a few seconds, wondering if what had just crossed his mind was even possible. Of course, he shouldn’t have doubted it. Anything was possible up here.

“She is getting under your skin…” he just said, simply. What else could he say? If this girl behind the closed door was who Miles thought she was… nothing made more sense, even if this in particular made little sense as well.

Olivier bathed him in a long and heavy glare. She’d find no way around this either, would she?

“What did you want me to do, Miles? Let her freeze to death?” _Let her faint in a public facility and not worry if someone saw?_ Zinnia’s being there meant Olivier would be forced to take risks, much worse than just this one. And as awkward as it all was, she was taking them anyway.

Miles frowned. Perhaps things weren’t as black and white now as she’d always pretended they were, after all.

“Maybe not,” he replied. “But… protocol would’ve kicked in, if she’d been anybody else. It stands at attention that… you’re not indifferent.” He almost left it off as an inquiry of sorts.

“I think you should go question my decisions _somewhere else_.” She spoke her mind clearly enough. It admitted no rebuke.

He looked at her, trying to tell her things she wouldn’t admit hearing out loud, and then he turned around and left, without bothering with the mandatory salute. Many didn’t, if the conversation wasn’t about work.

She scoffed.

“Not indifferent, my _ass._ ”

She wasn’t giving the flower girl any special treatment she wouldn’t to anybody that needed her fort’s help, was she? This was in no way over the top, just… a bed, shelter, a job. The bare minimum, nothing more.

_With your lurking around to make sure everything’s fine,_ a voice nagged at her inside her head.

But didn’t Olivier in one way or another always lurk around in the shadows, gently guiding everybody out of where they were into better situations? Nobody needed to be updated on this, but it was true, and it definitely redeemed her from being extra caring in this case. From being _weak._ And the weak didn’t survive for long in the north, even less so in the cold.

A long while later, the silence of the corridor was interrupted:

“I’m done,” called a little voice from inside the door Olivier was zealously guarding. It took her a moment to realize it came from the girl indeed. Some part of her hadn’t grown used to this vulnerability she’d discovered when Zinnia had come into the fort.

She practically ran inside that very second, forgetting for a moment that there might be something in there she wasn’t allowed to see. Thankfully, Zinnia had already put on the gray dress Olivier had lent her, and was standing demurely outside the tub, sitting down.

Olivier frowned, imagining that she might’ve stepped out on her own and taken her damn sweet time so she didn’t have to ask for help.

“Are you fine enough for dinner?” she asked.

Zinnia shrugged. She’d grabbed her clothes from before and the towel and placed them on her lap.

“If that’s okay with you. You said you had matters to tend to. If you have somewhere else to be, then I—”

“It’s fine,” Olivier cut her off at once, feeling a blush coming to attack her.

In the end, she might as well eat with everybody else. Miles had already taken care of today’s paperwork for her, and someone had to show the girl where the kitchens were, after all. It wouldn’t hurt that she was the one to do it. She’d offered to, before.

On the way down, Olivier promptly grabbed Zinnia’s clothes out of her hands and dumped them with the rest of the laundry. They would be easily recognizable, no one else in the fort used dresses. Zinnia tried to protest, but she had a hunch it wouldn’t help her at all, so she just focused on regaining her breath and testing her own stamina.

Food would definitely be a welcome addition to the day.

The second she walked in first into the kitchens—Olivier holding the door open for her, a courtesy that wouldn’t be repeated—the smell flooded her and she almost unhinged her jaw and dived face-first into the portions being served a few feet away from her.

“Kitchen’s open twenty-four hours. We have three meals a day,” Olivier droned on. “And there’s always food in storage in case you miss one.”

“Oh,” Zinnia only said.

“Sit down,” Olivier ordered. Her heartbeat had finally calmed down, and she felt slightly shaky, but nothing she couldn’t repress into oblivion. This, at least, was routine.

She walked to the counter, nodded to the cook, and took a couple of plates with the smudgy rations for the night. Despite the hour, many a soldier were sharing a table and talking animatedly among themselves. The noise, while not unpleasant, still bothered her. She felt a pressing need for silence so she could think clearly and assess the situation as her usual self, not this… mess.

She’d left the flower girl standing by the door, and she hadn’t moved from there, even if told otherwise. As Olivier walked to her, the door opened and Miles came in, his grey hair wet, and dressed in comfortable attire.

Olivier held her breath until she watched him approach a table far from the entrance. She walked quickly towards Zinnia.

“Sit,” she said again, and this time Zinnia did, not daring to make eye contact or say anything so far. Olivier tried to imagine what it would be like to walk into this fort without having an idea of what happened inside. But she had no room in her heart for pity—not anymore.

Olivier set both trays down on the table and sat across Zinnia. Her brown eyes were watery, but otherwise she looked fine. She wasn’t pale, that was a good sign.

“If you’re going to cry,” she said, voice low, “do so when you’re alone. Not here.”

“I’m not going to cry,” Zinnia said. “I’m just… taking it all in.”

“Good,” Olivier replied, and focused on her food from then on. As did Zinnia; eating would truly lift her spirits and help her recover some strength.

A few more men came in not much later, and when they passed by their table they greeted her solemnly. Some always did, excepting the veterans from the times when Olivier had been a newbie herself who had long ago chosen only to do it in more professional meetings. Here, in the kitchens, in the showers, out in the field, she was another one of them.

One of the soldiers, Austin, smiled warmly when he saw the two women and actually approached them.

“Who’s this?” he asked, meaning Zinnia.

A new face recognizing new faces, that was interesting, Olivier thought, but she made no comment.

“Visitor,” she only said.

“Oh.” Austin looked at Zinnia, his eyes inviting and homely.

The naiveté in them scratched Olivier’s heart on the daily. He might be a Briggs soldier now, but he still retained some partial softness that she feared might end him one day. A little kindness was fine, but a bucketful could mean you’d stop in the middle of a mission to aid a fallen men and inevitably fall yourself as well. Every time, Olivier’s mind replayed on a loop the image of Captain Buccaneer emerging from the snow, his entire right side covered in his own blood, so red against the white around them. Never again, she’d promised.

Olivier shut her eyes for a few seconds. _Never again._

“And from where are you visiting, if I may?” Austin asked. Warm, nice, interested. Even here, that set him apart from the rest, who ogled but didn’t pry and wouldn’t ask questions until Zinnia was established as a non-threat and an acquaintance from the general.

Zinnia smiled at him, glad for the question. This, to her, was normalcy. People interacting without judging or projecting their lives on you. Perhaps time ago she would’ve sent him away, because she didn’t like to be bothered, but his gentle question gave her a feeling of… familiarity in a place she felt like a pathogen in.

“The town a few miles down the road,” she said.

Austin frowned.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to have migrated south already?”

“That’s enough!” Olivier said. This would’ve blown her cover if she’d had one. But the fucking nosey kid wanted to dig deeper and deeper, didn’t he?, and that could only lead to exposing the weakness inside her that just kept growing. And the north needed her where she was— tall, strong, proud, icy. Ever the wall, never just the woman. Fifteen years… Couldn’t she just be the woman for five minutes? “That’s enough,” she repeated, lowering her voice as half the room had ceased their eating to see what was going on. “Find a table to sit in, Austin. And scram.”

“Sir…” he said, eyes down. But his face remained calm, no trace of ear in it. _Good,_ she thought. _Obedience shouldn’t be rooted just in fear. Not in a kitchen, anyway._

When he’d walked away, sitting down with a few fellow soldiers in the back of the room, Zinnia stopped messing with her mashed food and looked at the woman opposite her.

“He was just being nice…”

“Why you’re here is none of his business. None of _their_ business.”

“Why _am_ I here?” Zinnia dared to ask.

Olivier swallowed her words down so she wouldn’t have to exit her own kitchen in fury.

“If you prefer the blizzard, then—”

“No,” Zinnia said immediately. “No, I just… He was _just_ being nice. Is that not allowed here? Are all of you supposed to be heartless? Is that why you’re so invincible?”

Olivier had those answers, but she chose not to give them.

“That,” she said instead, “is none of _your_ business.”

Zinnia took a deep breath.

“And now, if you’re done,” Olivier spoke again, “let’s go. It’s late.”

It really wasn’t, not to her standards at least, but she didn’t feel like her body could take another five hours on a chair, reviewing paperwork and tank documents.

Zinnia eyed the general’s tray and felt almost tempted to say it was still too full to just leave now, but Olivier had been right. It really was none of her business. She was just here because she couldn’t survive anywhere else, and that’s all that mattered tonight. Tomorrow would be a very different story.

Having been shown the way before, Zinnia remembered where they were going. She had expected to be taken to a much bigger room where living space was shared, so when she realized they were going back to Olivier’s quarters, she almost missed a step.

“Won’t you show me to where I’ll be sleeping before you dismiss me?” she asked. It would be a trip if they returned there and then Olivier told her she was supposed to find her own room by herself because goodnight was in order right now.

“That’s where we’re going,” Olivier said, without looking at her. She kept walking so Zinnia would too. The sooner they got there, the sooner she’d be able to lie down and forget about all this before it ate her alive. It’d been too many changes for just one day. Too many emotions.

“But…” Zinnia licked her lips. “This path goes to your bedroom.”

And this path was dangerously close to it already.

Olivier, with all the patience she could muster, which admittedly didn’t make for a great amount, tried to be reasonable.

“I’ve nowhere else to place you, as I said before,” Olivier said. “So that will have to do.”

Zinnia refused to take a step further. She was aware of how much this bothered the other woman, who clearly wanted to get there already and was constantly forced to go back on her steps.

“Sorry,” Zinnia said. “But no.”

Olivier scoffed.

“Fine, stay there, then” she said, and continued forward. She pushed her door open and almost closed it behind, but didn’t. She waited.

Zinnia didn’t take long at all to come knocking at it.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” she stammered out as soon as she was inside. Olivier was already getting a couple of extra blankets from her drawers and setting them on the planks of wood hear the wall opposite to where the bed was.

“Doctor said to rest,” she said without turning her back to Zinnia. “You won’t rest there.”

“And you will?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not comfortable with that,” Zinnia said. “It’s your bed.”

Olivier stood up again, and Zinnia was painfully and very obviously reminded of the sheer power she gave off without even meaning to. This was magnified at will, and Zinnia, for a moment, remembered all those times in Iver when she’d felt insignificant yet somehow acknowledged in her presence.

_Like I was a puny enemy she can crush with her thumb but chooses to let live,_ Zinnia thought. That same energy was being channeled now.

Six feet and two inches of unadulterated power stared back at her. Zinnia had to crane her neck up a little to face it head-on. Wherever she looked without turning her head, there was blue. Blue and gold.

“And you’re my guest.” _Hurt that who it may,_ Olivier thought to herself. _Which is mostly me._ “So you’re taking the bed.”

With that, she took one of the pillows on the bed and sat down on the blanket she’d lain on the floor, then reclined until her back was against the floorboards. This was going to be a long night, it had certainly been a while since she’d slept in such conditions. A long, long while.

Olivier covered herself with another blanket, not bothering to change into different clothes. To do that, she’d have to get out of the room, since now she was sharing it and couldn’t just remove clothes willy-nilly. And she was too tired, and didn’t give enough shits.

With her back turned to the girl, she could only imagine by what she heard that Zinnia was, in fact and however much in reluctance, sitting down on the bed, and eventually letting her head touch the pillows. She even took a jumpy breath, like she liked the scent of the room and couldn’t really admit it to herself. The next breath flowed easier, gentler. It calmed Olivier down as well.

The silence that followed slowly loosened the knots in her body, and despite the hardness of the floor below her, she felt herself relax bit by bit.

“Fucking cold…” she heard Zinnia mutter so softly that for a second Olivier thought she’d misheard.

She didn’t move on her slapdash bed, but she made sure her voice would carry anyway.

“Winters are beautiful here,” she said.

She’d been witness to many. The mountains disappeared under layers of snow and ice, and the only color in the world below her feet was the candid blue of the sky. And it was so cold that not a lot of animals ventured out, only her men would brave up nature during those months, and because they did so prepared.

Every year she welcomed the beginning of the colder season. For her, the sun always burned too hot in summer. She preferred the simplicity of winter. If cold, you could just add a layer or two, reinforce the material around the room. The heat made that impossible, and the military allowed no lighter version of the uniforms.

“Isn’t it October?” Zinnia replied a few seconds after, her voice sleepy.

Olivier rolled her eyes, even if the girl wouldn’t see it.

“Or is this like when you guys call summer anything that’s not fucking freezing temperatures?”

Olivier smiled.

“Basically,” she admitted. “Winter would be ‘fucking freezing’, then.”

Not yet, but soon. And that felt like a pleasant enough thought to fall asleep to, later.

“Good to know…” Zinnia whispered. She moved on the bed, the sheets rustled a little against her body. The dress Olivier had given her would probably be too large for her, she’d get tangled both in it and the sheets. “I look forward to seeing it but… you don’t have any big enough windows to appreciate the spectacle.”

The windows on Fort Briggs were small, yes, and a gift. Against an armed siege, they would defend them just as well as a truly impenetrable wall. But, admittedly, they weren’t very useful for admiring the landscape around the wall.

They had the top of the fort for that. Olivier knew for a fact some men liked to have late night watches so they could see the first light of the day illuminating the view. She, herself, found it a beautiful memory, to be up there when it got cold and gray and quiet, and then slowly witness the world come alive with the sun.

Careful, she rolled on the floor to look at Zinnia across her. Their eyes met in the darkness.

“I’ll have you taken to the top of the wall so you can see it,” Olivier muttered.

Zinnia grinned softly. She looked about to drift off to sleep, after so many hours and so many emotions.

“That’d be really nice, actually,” she said, and her smile grew a little.

Olivier thought, right this moment, that she could trust that smile.

“Sure…” she said.

And when she next opened her eyes, Zinnia’s own were closed, and she had fallen asleep with the ghost of that smile on her lips.

_Good night, flower girl,_ Olivier thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hilarious because this was written in July or so, and I had no idea I would actually be posting a chapter with an October reference in .... well, October XD
> 
> (also, @ writer brain: 9k. why do i have 2k and 9k chapters? what is this mess???)


	20. Such terrible circumstances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Such terrible circumstances aka I have no clue how to do this, help me" these are the actual notes from my Word document that precede the chapter XD

Light woke her. Before she opened her eyes, she expected the bitter cold gnawing at her limbs, the cool air into her lungs, and the anxiety of having to go through one more day in this unbearable wasteland.

Yet when Zinnia finally roused and took a look at what awaited her, that chilly breath she’d been expecting died before it was even taken. There was nothing cold or harsh in the image presented before her.

A sleeping beauty, hair sprawled over the floor like liquid sunlight.

It had not been a dream, after all. One doesn’t wake from a dream into a dream, and if one does, it feels different, like jelly in the stomach. This reality was solid. Zinnia’s bare feet hit the wood and it creaked, its surface rasped a little against her heels.

She was in the general’s room. She had slept there. She had been given shelter for the winter. She was _safe._

And suddenly, in the soft cocoon of safety, with the same desperation a terribly full bladder gives you, she realized she needed to warn whoever was left in her life that cared that she hadn’t died in the cold.

Then, she could go back to letting them ignore her. But they needed to know. Anthony needed to know he had failed, and that others hadn’t. Again.

Again and always. His burden would be Zinnia’s salvation.

Zinnia supported her full weight on her feet now. She stood, and she looked around.

The general was sleeping _right there._ If she so much as took the wrong step, the woman would wake. And Zinnia could only cower in fear of the rage she could unleash onto the room if that happened.

So she moved slowly, biting down hard on her lip to keep herself from making any involuntary noise. She needed a phone, and breakfast, and more instructions. She would be expected to get a job now too. But she supposed they would guide her through all the necessary stages later today.

She was about to take the final step before reaching for the door handle when Olivier’s leg just… moved towards her ankle like an avalanche.

“Please no,” Zinnia said, but both legs collided, and she had to hug a wall in order not to fall. _She’s… too strong, even when she’s sleeping._

But Olivier didn’t move again. So Zinnia went at it once more, slowly positioning her feet so she wouldn’t lose her balance in the jungle of limbs, slowly wrapping her fingers around the handle, getting ready to finally open the door.

And when it clicked and she was pulling, seeing the corridors’ lights, she had to immediately close it like she’d never even touched the vicinity of it.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Olivier said in her normal voice, like she didn’t get waking-up hangover like the rest of the mortals. When Zinnia turned around, hands behind her back, in a dress too long for her, she found that all that hangover was visible in the general’s face. Zinnia almost awed out loud. She also almost laughed.

It was so human. So imperfectly, beautifully human of Olivier.

“I… didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You haven’t. But you might as well just have,” Olivier said, standing up quickly. All the cute energy Zinnia had been picking up last night disappeared the second Olivier stood in front of her in all her tall glory. “Where were you going?”

“Breakfast. Phone,” Zinnia gulped. “Both.”

“You can use my line, at my office,” Olivier said, clearly dismissing the subject. “Breakfast first, I assume?”

Zinnia looked at her, not very sure what she was supposed to do. She could just leave and stroll around until she found the office. Last night’s dinner had restored her energy a little, and she felt ready for the challenge. Eventually, as always, she would get to her destination.

“Right,” Olivier said, realizing the girl didn’t know where anything was in this place. “I’ll just have to show you the way. Again.”

“Thank you?” Zinnia said. It qualified as a kindness, but Olivier was playing it all of a sudden like it cost her more than just time. Like it was an awfully big favor Zinnia could never even hope to fully repay.

“Put your shoes on and wait for me outside the room,” Olivier said, then. “I won’t be long.”

A few minutes later, she emerged in an exact replica of the uniform she’d slept in, and had folded the old one to put it with the rest of the laundry, a few floors down.

First, they had breakfast with everyone else. Zinnia noticed a few tired faces in the crowd, and somebody was literally sleeping on one of the tables. She supposed they all had different schedules, to keep the fort operative and running twenty-four hours a day.

She thought she’d never get used to this. However she looked at it, she was imprisoned by the threat of freezing to death in the outdoors. She had to share living quarters with people of morally dubious approaches she’d never really trusted before and didn’t want to now.

She and Olivier attracted a few more curious glances that morning. Zinnia didn’t even waste time wondering why. They might as well have been the respective spokespeople for two warring nations, in all their differences. And it wasn’t just their mindsets, their whole lives that set them apart. Everybody around here wore blue uniforms and black coats, and Zinnia walked the same space in a gray dress that didn’t even belong to her.

Gray marked the spot.

After that, they left without a word, and Zinnia made sure to memorize the way so she wouldn’t need someone to take her there again, should she need to return. Despite all the corridors and doors looking the same, once she’d seen it, her chances of getting lost weren’t as high as they could be.

As soon as they were in, Olivier took off her gloves, and it became obvious that this room relaxed her, because it was territory she had absolute control over, even when she had to stay sitting there for hours. She pointed at the phone that normally only she used, trying not to remind herself that the girl could’ve very easily just called home from the common phone area, like everybody else.

“Make your calls,” she told Zinnia as she sat down, quite a while later than it was usual for her. Miles remained dutifully in silence in the table next to hers, feigning total indifference to what went on in this room unless it somehow involved him.

Zinnia did as told and dialed Anthony’s number.

She heard the ‘hello?’ on the other line and almost hung up on instinct. So sad, that she felt this way about someone she considered herself friends with. So sad, that her heart no longer attributed calling home to giddy excitement. Once, it’d been routine. Now, it was barely even duty.

“It’s Zin,” she said. “You said to call and I did.”

She listened to him make it all about him, about his worry, about how hard he’d tried to find someone to ride north with him, yet (unsurprisingly) nobody in their hometown was interested, and so he hadn’t pressed it. She as finding out, too, he hadn’t ever called North City after all.

“Yeah, yeah, well, I’m okay now, you won’t have to bother,” she interrupted him. “I’ll be here a while, so call me to this number.” She took a quick and unmeasured look at Olivier, in case she would object. It was her phone, after all. But the general’s gaze was empty and Zinnia took that as approval.

Anthony asked her where she was.

“Fort Briggs,” she only said. As soon as he said it back at her as a question, she hung up. She’d done all she felt compelled to. Now he knew she was alive and well and safe enough nobody would have to worry about her in a long time.

In contrast to what she’d felt this morning at the kitchens, this was now liberating her. Even if Anthony would probably call again, how long would he last on the phone with General Armstrong?

She almost smiled at the thought. He would pretend the line was quiet the second she picked up, that was for sure.

_Coward,_ she thought. And the continued fiction of him reacting to the Ice Queen lifted her spirits a little as she literally stood there in a room where nobody was paying attention to her.

Anthony would run, Anthony would get so pale everyone would think him dead, Anthony wouldn’t get through an entire winter trapped inside a military fort. Not even with the nicest, blandest of troops.

Zinnia, though, had blushed in the presence of the general for months, sneaked out to help her in her shady professional endeavors, and written her words she would never, under any circumstances, ever hope to give other people. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t one to talk.

It still took a few more seconds before Olivier looked up from her maps and bullet lists and files and frowned at her.

“Are you about done?”

“Yes.”

Olivier stared at her. Zinnia wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish by scrutinizing her, but she let her anyway. She had nice eyes.

“Sit,” Olivier finally said.

Zinnia did. She felt once again like a ten-year-old kid going to the doctor and having to be there, all quiet and still, until they started asking her questions she never knew how to answer right.

“So?” she said now. Because she wasn’t ten nor a child. And in the light of day, it got easier to stand her ground before the woman who was known for mastering that very feat.

“So,” Olivier said, “your job.”

“What about it?”

“Do you have any preferences or can I just assign you to whatever I like?”

Zinnia thought about it.

“What do you got?”

Olivier smiled placidly, elbows on the table. She could almost hear Miles’s eyes on her, putting all of his senses onto spying on this conversation.

“For you?” Olivier teased. “Not much.”

“Well, obviously I’ll have to take it, whatever it is,” Zinnia counterattacked. The alternative was freezing her butt off under a worrisome amount of duvets.

When Olivier smiled again in the span of a minute, Zinnia’s heart gave a fluttery jump in her chest. Then it sank when the general spoke again, clearly knowing what she was doing.

“Kitchens,” she said.

“Kitchens?”

“You know where they are, so you won’t have any trouble getting down there.”

Zinnia gulped.

“I feel obligated to tell you I’m a disastrous cook.”

“It can’t be of that much impact to the _already_ terrible food,” Olivier said slowly, like she was ready for all and any rebukes on her part.

“You’d be surprised…” Zinnia said under her breath. Her father hadn’t let her near food since the last culinary disaster of hers. She didn’t find it that distasteful, but then again when she was alone she had no choice but to eat what she prepared, and after so long she might’ve already grown used to it. Perhaps the only things she more or less didn’t suck at was molding bread and serving food other people had cooked.

Olivier growled, as was typical of her when someone got on her nerves this specifically.

“Anything you have to say you can say loud and clear.”

“I said you’d be surprised.”

“I thought you had no choice.”

“And do I? You’re the one offering me a job, you should know.”

At this point, Olivier did hear Miles stifle a chuckle. She ignored him for now, but she had plans for him she knew he wouldn’t like.

“We could use reinforcement in all areas,” she said. “But the job at the kitchens is one that can’t be easily paired with mandatory tasks. So, if you don’t object to it, you would be more useful there than anywhere else, since you don’t have any training.”

_Useful? Now it’s all about usefulness?_ Zinnia thought. She had to earn her stay and it sort of made sense they would try and make the most of out of her work. But… what did it matter where she was placed as long as she performed dutifully? Would she really be that terrible at another job?

“Alright, then,” she said in the end, crossing her arms.

Olivier then briefed her quickly and disinterestedly on the basics. Schedule, tasks, and the menu they’d been living off for years. Zinnia made sure to memorize all of it and was given a piece of paper, after a while of her just nodding, so she could write it all down in case she happened to forget. She would have to get up early, starting tomorrow, and then spend the majority of the morning and afternoon between cooking pots and hungry soldiers. A price she would pay dearly just for the faces of the first ‘lucky’ ones to savor her … masterpieces. For a moment, she hoped Olivier would be among them.

“Oh, and from now on,” Olivier finished, loud enough so Miles would be interrupted from whatever he was working on, “Major Miles will show you around. I simply don’t have the time.”

Zinnia almost vocalized her puzzlement. She was supposed to go around the fort with a complete stranger now? She could appreciate Olivier’s gentility in saying she no longer had the time, because it meant that in some way she’d thought at first to take that task upon herself. More likely just to watch over her and make sure Zinnia didn’t cause any ruckus, but still.

“Sir?” Miles said, clearly surprised

“Until she learns her way,” Olivier replied. “Shouldn’t take long.”

Zinnia nodded in apprehension. The major looked… normal enough, but he was big and his lips were perfectly straight, as if he had never smiled in his life. He covered his eyes with goggles, too. Nothing good ever hid behind men who concealed their identities like this, she thought. But this was Briggs, so perhaps it was just a fashion thing. She’d already seen people with questionable hairdos and a man with a metal arm.

“And I suppose you will need clothes, too,” Miles said, addressing Zinnia directly now.

Olivier, though, replied before she could.

“A few sizes less than me should do it,” she said. “I’m sure there has to be something in storage.”

_Wait,_ he _knows her measurements?_ Zinnia thought, without being able to stop herself. The images popping into her head were anything but pleasant to the eye.

“I’ll take a look at it right away,” Miles said, standing on his feet. Zinnia did too. She had to follow him now, closely and trying not to mistake him for another tall soldier in blue—there were _many_ of those here. She thought of his name until she was more or less sure she wouldn’t forget it, which was never entirely guaranteed. “Miss, if you’ll come with me now…” he told her.

Zinnia stood where she was for a couple of seconds, looking at Olivier. Part of her wondered how … interesting it would have been, to have had to keep on following her places in order not to get lost. She had a feeling there wouldn’t be half as much banter with Major Miles. A pity, really.

“General,” Zinnia told her, as a way to say goodbye.

Olivier looked at her, but said nothing. She would have to get used to the flower girl calling her that now. 

* * *

 

The complaints ended up being unbearable. Even the men who had spent literal decades of their lives there, who had survived on defrosted meat during the roughest years of the war, who had crossed the mountain range without weapons to settle the truce that had bought Amestris a few years, came in hordes to Olivier’s office like never before.

“It’s become inedible, sir. Downright inedible.”

“How much longer is the situation going to remain unaddressed?”

“So, now, on top of the extra shifts and the early cold, we have to put up with terrible food?”

Olivier could have hidden away from all of this. The exact amount of responsibility she had in all of this was null, at least in matters related to who to fry with questions and complaints and a collective insistence that made her wish these men weren’t the best at working as one sometimes.

Instead, she sat tall and proud, not bothering to look up from the paperwork of that morning. They would all leave eventually, when it got through to their thick little heads that she didn’t plan to move a finger. On rare occasions, the provisions that came all the way from North City’s quarters differed in quality from what the soldiers were accustomed to, but they would grow used to this, if they wanted to eat and preserve their job. That was the official version, at least.

But it was too much to leave it up to chance that the same day Zinnia had been appointed to work in the kitchens every meal had become a torment.

She wondered how on earth it was even possible for Zinnia to have lived that long on her own without learning how to properly cook an onion and how much of it to add to the dish. The onion disaster had been left almost untouched for a week, because it neither went bad nor lost consistency, and nobody dared to even try it.

On the second day, someone had returned from the patrols over the perimeter with a deer over their shoulder, and that night at least they’d had something decent to eat. Olivier shouted at them when she’d found out for neglecting their duties in favor of hunting, but when she saw the faces of the ten grown men she’d caught red-handed, she had to take it back. A famished batch of men would be of less use to her than one who took the chance to shoot an animal down for food and pelt.

She announced, then, that anything any of them brought back to the fort would have to be properly shared, even mixed with the food—to wash it down more easily.

Even so, today here they were, filling her office with unnecessary noise.

_And here I thought we were prepping for war…_ she thought to herself, somewhat amused. The food was bad, granted. But it could be worse. They could run out of it, and then they _would_ be forced to hunt in freezing temperatures for months, until the first thawing of spring allowed decent transport to come in from the southern cities. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened, yet many men didn’t remember because they hadn’t been here yet.

The current loudness, though, was suddenly overridden by something even more thunderous. Footsteps on the corridor that parted the little crowd at the door and the huge silhouette of Captain Buccaneer against the light.

“General, this is a scandal!” he roared. “You wouldn’t just be sitting there if the emergency was a different one.”

Everybody else, finding it useless to continue screaming when Buccaneer’s voice definitely overpowered them all, quietened.

Olivier, finally, stopped working to look at her men. At the captain.

“I respond to the _current_ alleged emergency, not the one you’re using as an excuse. Where are your manners, Captain? All these men were here before you.”

“And yet they’ve shut up.” Buccaneer lifted an eyebrow. Which made his frown all the more amusing to her. There he stood, a man capable of bringing carnage down on anyone with half a move, angry because he didn’t like the food. She felt tempted to refresh his memory. _Losing that arm was an emergency, this is just a nuisance. And Briggs doesn’t bow to nuisances._ “Because they recognize my authority.”

“ _Julian_ _,_ ” she crooned with a smirk. She saw the eyes of her soldiers opening wide at the first name of the captain. She never used it, because she had guessed Buccaneer wasn’t very fond of it. It was like finding out he liked something embarrassing and telling the entire fort when normally he was the king of gossip. “Your so-called authority here is imaginary.” She scoffed and sneered at them all. “You come here with demands—explanations, an immediate change. You took the matter into your own hands once, like true men of Briggs, despite my initial insistence that it wasn’t honorable.” Again, she pierced Buccaneer’s eyes with her own. She saw fear pooling in his, slowly, like stirring a mix. “You want things to be different? Then take them into your hands again and teach the girl how you like your porridge. Sort out your damn priorities, men.” She let him go, at last, looking at the room at large. “This is war, not your mothers’ kitchens.”

Dozens of eyes stared back at her.

“To your posts,” she said, and they followed. One by one, they exited the room.

All but Buccaneer.

His frown remained ever-present.

“At this rate, the men will stop eating.”

“You’ve heard me. If you want something done right, then _do_ it. The men didn’t stop eating rancid meat. The men didn’t stop eating when all we had left was expired goods. This is not about the men, or the cause. Is it?”

Buccaneer stared back, unmoving.

“Give the girl another job,” he said. “If she must stay here, at least let’s make her useful.”

Miles suddenly roused from his usual pretend slumber to look at him.

“She is useful,” Olivier insisted. “The same way you are _not,_ cluttering my office with insulting demands while you should be on the job.”

Buccaneer didn’t look at her, then. He looked back at Miles.

She slammed the table, and not as loudly as she could have.

“You’re wasting my _time,_ ” she told him.

She held Buccaneer’s gaze then, and after a few seconds, he left in silence, still pouting.

How much longer would she have to put up with this nonsense? She wondered. When had her soldiers become such buffoons?

But, in the back of her head, that voice hummed: _they have a point, you know? Why defend the girl?_

Olivier took a deep breath and forced herself to look at the task this last visit had made her leave unfinished. She wasn’t defending anyone. She was prioritizing, and a girl with terrible cooking skills in a kitchen inside a fort she needed to defend with her life definitely was not and would never be a priority. 

* * *

 

Getting weird looks in the corridors had started to be a problem. This wasn’t her fault and she knew it. She had given out her warning— _beware, I cannot cook to save my life_ —and nobody had listened, now it was too late to either back out or blame herself.

The hilarity of the situation only lasted a few days, in which the kitchens were very very quiet during lunch, much to her surprise. She’d smirked to herself as she stirred her odorous concoctions and smiled meekly at Olivier, who ate every last mouthful of it, almost defying her. That woman had to have a stomach coated in iron or something, because literally nobody else—including Zinnia—could finish an entire meal on one sitting. The trick was to get used to the taste and musky texture, and then face the challenge slowly.

Now the soldiers ate but she could tell they wished they didn’t have to. Some that had started out being friendly to her had taken a liking to glare at her when they walked past her in the corridors, as if she could do anything to solve this. No matter how many cooking books she read and studied, no matter how many years she’d been preparing food, it was always this heart-breaking to put in your mouth.

And it wasn’t supposed to be affecting her. She’d withstood the biting remarks of her mother years ago, and she’d killed her own taste buds in order to remain alive after moving out. Zinnia _knew_ very well what she lacked in culinary activities. But was the distinct stink-eye they were giving her necessary, when it had been someone else who had let her take the job and didn’t really seem to mind keeping her there?

It got boring and sad, after a few days. And, worst of all, lonely. Nobody talked to her other than to ask, sometimes, if there wasn’t another dish she could serve. When she shook her head, they moved their trays away. And when she went to bed at night, smelling like beef and flour, Olivier wasn’t there either, and wouldn’t be for a few hours. Some nights, when she walked in, Zinnia woke up from her slumber, as if to confirm she was there at last. Then, she fell back asleep.

They didn’t talk. Nobody talked to her. And she had nothing to do all day except wander around and work. So far, she’d found nothing of interest. Just bunks and showers and the laundry room, and huge spaces that seemed to take up half a floor at least. She had walked out at once, she had no interest in half-built tanks and the rest of the weaponry. It wasn’t hard to imagine that blood had been shed because of that, and would continue to be.

Their country, after all, rested upon the foundations of war and blood spillage. And the military was the only force that would ever answer for it.

She decided, one day, that perhaps the solution to her boredom was closer than she’d thought. To be more precise, hiding in her old room at Iver.

She found herself walking to Olivier’s office.

“What’d you want?” Olivier barked before the door was even pushed open. Today, it was budget day. Approve this, reject this. Send an angry letter to Central explaining how the hell they were supposed to last on last month’s rations for another four weeks. She was expecting nobody today, especially not after the little lecture that seemed to have worked, since no one else had come to complain since.

She looked up just in time to see Zinnia, in the blue uniform that Miles had found for her time ago—the only clothes they all had to offer her.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Zinnia said. She had seen how everyone behaved around Olivier, and while she had no real idea if that’s how it was customary to address a general, she did her best. She wanted to fit in, at long last. Or, at least, be invisible enough that people would neither bother her nor be bothered by her presence. “But I have a favor to ask.”

Olivier outright laughed out loud.

“And what would the little dove need of me today?”

Zinnia shivered at the nicknamed and wondered what on earth she could have in common with a bird, let alone a little dove.

“I don’t _need_ anything. I just wanted to know if there was any way I could go back to town.”

Olivier’s soul fell from her mouth, catastrophically crashing against the table until Zinnia kept talking:

“There’s nothing for me to do here except cook, and the days are long,” Zinnia brushed her bangs away. They were so long already, soon she’d be able to comb them behind her ears. “So I thought I would ask to go and retrieve my things.”

Olivier quickly grasped at her slippery soul to get it back. Nothing to run away from here. Nothing to worry about.

She frowned.

“You want your things? That’s it?”

“It wouldn’t take long. Just a day. I’d ride, grab some stuff, and ride back.”

Olivier shook her head. What if she got lost, and then she had to send an entire battalion to go look for her? Worse. What if she ran away or was captured by Drachma, and they’d never be able to tell which since both options entailed being kept in the dark?

Her final excuse, though, sounded almost convincing.

“You’re not used to the cold. I’ll send someone else.”

“I was in that house for days. This is just _one_ day. Nothing will happen.”

“You’re not expendable. If you leave, who will fill in for you?”

Zinnia raised an eyebrow. She was the closest thing to ‘expendable’ Olivier would ever seen, yet she was saying the opposite.

“Who was doing my job before I came here?”

Olivier leveled the game up, clenching her teeth.

“Men who now work at what they should: keeping the border safe.”

Zinnia only hesitated for a moment.

“Men who wouldn’t know what I need, and who you’d still be ordering to do something that’s not _their_ job.”

Olivier ignored that last part. She had the feeling she wasn’t winning at this.

“Make a list, then,” she said. “I’ll give it to whoever rides down.” And before Zinnia could complain, Olivier added: “And I assure you, my men are _very_ apt at following orders.”

Zinnia snorted.

“So I’ve heard, yeah.”

As Zinnia stole a piece of paper from Miles’s desk and a pen to write on it, Olivier’s frown grew more and more pronounced. There was only one reason the girl wanted her things _now._ And it brought a cascade of relief to her mind. It meant she hadn’t done that much of a bad job, letting her in, giving her something to do.

“Planning on staying, then?” Olivier asked.

Zinnia looked up at her at once.

“I might as well. I’ve nowhere else to go.”

When she saw how Olivier’s face softened slightly, Zinnia panicked. She had just admitted out loud that this place, huge and lonely and boring, had washed over her as her much needed salvation.

“The—um—the closest place I could travel to is… half a country away, so…” she added, trailing off. Why the fuck was she thinking of how to justify this? She was here, she had been invited to be, the rest of it was information nobody needed to have. Especially not the general. _Oh god especially not her…_

“Well,” Olivier said, and she sounded pensive. It was a big change from the usual grunt or yell, “you’re welcome here, as long as—”

“As long as I work,” Zinnia scoffed. “Yeah, I know. I’m working.”

She didn’t know how to view this. This woman had saved her, given her shelter, taught her how to survive in said shelter, and then just… left her to meander on her own, never to speak to her again until now.

Olivier rubbed at her lower back. Zinnia almost felt guilty. She had saved her, sheltered her, gave her a job, _and_ given her her own bed.

“Do you have it ready?” Olivier asked. Professional again. Professional for practically the first time. She’d been nothing but an angry figure of authority with too much to do and no desire at all to do anything but look intimidating.

“Oh, the list…” Zinnia said, quickly leaning forward to give it to her. She crossed her legs as Olivier read through it, trying to make herself smaller. “As you can see, it’s not a lot of stuff that I… need.”

Olivier made a noise in approval.

_Books, notebook, clothes._ And she was going to orchestrate a trip just for those three things. If the girl had asked, Olivier would have pointed her in the direction of the library, grabbed a stack of paper and put it on her desk in their room, and given her more than just two uniforms to wear. But the girl had instead requested this.

A man and a horse, that was all it would take. Not that big of a sacrifice.

“You could—I mean, there’s also food, if you want to… you know, bring it back,” Zinnia said, her voice a little less confident. “I’ve noticed my… meals aren’t all that popular with your men.”

Olivier smiled at her.

“Their stomachs have grown complacent. They’ve forgotten that in times of war what is more important isn’t the food itself but the fact that we have it.”

“Okay, then… Just, well, if you wanted to write it down as well… there’s cans and stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Olivier actually looked at her with humanity in her eyes, understanding, and maybe even a little bit of pity. “And return to your post.”

Zinnia nodded, got up and left. She had no idea that was the gentlest dismissal Olivier had offered in a long, long time. 

* * *

 

“She’s coming, she’s coming. Stand straight,” Austin whispered to his fellow soldiers from Central. They all immediately went from resembling blue cooked spaghetti to the solidest planks of wood.

“At ease” she grumbled, clearly having heard them. She approached only Austin. “You. Saddle a horse; I have a _very_ important mission for you.”

She watched, not without some amusement, how his companions made proud faces at him as Austin himself blushed intensely.

“For… for me?”

Olivier nodded.

“Of utmost importance,” she said. Then, she handed over to him the list the flower girl had drafted. “I want you to retrieve this from the yellow house at Iver. And I want you back before nightfall.”

“Sir, I… thank you so much for trusting me with this.”

She judged him with her eyes for a few seconds until he self-corrected.

“I mean… Yes, sir. Of course, sir. At once,” he stuttered.

“And cover yourself up appropriately, soldier. It’s cold today,” she said before she kept walking on, leaving the flock of hens to fangirl over Austin’s new little mission so she could visit Buccaneer for any news of the Mountain Men.

The border remained protected, even if both sides had people pooling around it, waiting to see who had the guts to shoot first. And whatever happened, Olivier’s side would hold until the end of times.

“More sightings, but no attacks,” Buccaneer told her.

He seemed to have gotten over the whole food ordeal, at least in relation to her shutting him up in public and not exactly through gentility and understanding.

“If they keep mimicking us,” she said, “we still play with field advantage. And the surprise factor as well. Such like in chess…”

“I don’t feel they’re going to, General. More like just… studying us. They never cross over the border, and their weapons are always down. And that’s when they _bring_ them.”

Olivier sighed.

“I wonder what the hell they’re up to.  Because it’s clear to me the question is no longer if they _are._ ”

“Maybe they’re just following orders. And there’s no way we can have access to those, is there?”

“Not without actively getting our hands on the information. And that’s not acceptable.”

“I can go, sir.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“They’ll sniff you right out, Buccaneer.”

“I can be stealthy when the situation requires it.”

“Stick to your job, leave outsmarting Drachma to me.”

“Good luck with that…”

“No more spies?”

“No more spies, that we know of.”

Olivier frowned.

“Interrogate the last batch Central sent us.”

“That’ll… take a while.”

“Excellent, then,” she said. “It will keep your mind off the glory you hope to attain out there, Captain.”

“It’s not about the glory. It’s about serving you right.”

Olivier put a hand on his metal arm.

“You serve me right, by listening. I don’t need a legion of martyrs. I need soldiers who will be ready to march into battle with the conviction to win, even without me. Are you still one of those, Julian? Or do you continue to want things Briggs can’t give you?”

“Outsmarting them… can’t be done without actually knowing the plan that they think makes them smarter than us.”

“Like I said, leave that to me. You make sure we don’t have a mole.” Which she already knew they didn’t. But it did indeed give him something to distract himself with. “And keep me informed.” 

* * *

 

The truth was that Olivier didn’t worry now, not like during times past. She’d wasted her chance at truly getting inside the head of Drachma’s leaders, but she still had the higher ground. Briggs would outlast any siege, even on such terrible food. And on an open battlefield, with the fully-functioning tanks now that they’d found the antifreeze oil, the upper hand was theirs even if Drachma had powered up as well.

These days, Olivier worked herself to unhealthy extents to preserve the order of things. Subtly give this man a task that would boost his self-esteem and make him feel welcome at last; beat Mauser over and over until she was certain he had interiorized a new maneuver; keep up with Miles’s extensive updates of the daily schedules and everything new that was incorporated; give Buccaneer a ball of wool to play with while she figured out how to get her hands on better materials.

A healthy and content army would get them far. She’d always believed that much. And she always refused to count herself as part of that army. She was just the one who had united them, now it was up to them to move forward. If anything, she would push them a little from behind, where they would barely notice.

And the fact that nobody seemed to see the point to which this had become overworking was another victory. Miles would worry, and Miles would get through to her if he knew. But she’d made sure nobody did, maybe not even herself. Not this time.

The food, the sleeping situation… It all came out of one of those macabre novels she’d liked in her youth about enchanted forests crawling with dark magic and creatures of the fae trapping you within by means of showing you beauty beyond compare and otherworldly treasures. Everything had become part of a spell in which Olivier put her owns needs in the last place because it was the right thing to do—because in excusing herself on the ‘right thing’, she didn’t have to admit why she really did it.

Her back hurt now almost all day, after spending her nights in almost direct contact with the hard floor. And she’d developed an even greater tolerance to the worst of meals. If she ever had Iver’s tiramisu again, she would probably dissolve in happiness from how good it tasted in comparison to all of this.

The right thing… Fuck the right thing.

The food, the sleeping situation, and sending Austin off on a ridiculous mission. He had brought everything on the list. And now Olivier’s room looked just like it would if it was just Zinnia living there.

Everybody paying attention would object to it being the right thing. The right thing would have been to end it, to send her back to her family, and let Briggs continue doing their thing.

Thank god nobody saw past what she’d put up for them to see. A lost sheep who couldn’t cook and a very fierce lion who could bite anyone who came too close.

Perhaps if the sheep and the lion spent more time together in public Olivier’s secret would stop being a secret and finally evolve into the final stage of it she was deeply terrified of: gossip. Buccaneer and Miles sitting together somewhere, giggling like schoolgirls about the possibility. Always the possibility. She would make them do dishes after work for months, if she caught them.

But they never would now, unless they stepped into her own room one night and saw—well—the situation.

Because outside that room, the only time of day Olivier would be around the flower girl was at lunch and dinner, and occasionally Zinnia would go on her own lunch break and they would sit at the same table and perhaps, sometimes, talk.

How was her day going? Zinnia would ask.

Fine. How was Zinnia’s? Olivier would reply, rubbing at her back sometimes without being able to help it, and praying so that the girl wouldn’t ever find out why. That would make for an awkward conversation.

How on earth had they ended up back at awkward conversation? After those many attempts at normalcy and those occasional moments in which Olivier had glimpsed for a second something more than just politeness. Then again, her job was to anticipate, to see what wasn’t even there in case it ever was. She’d underperformed this time in that regard.

At night, there would be no performance at all. The darkness hid anything she usually worked through a filter or two. The darkness and the angle, working together to help her from facing reality.

War, she was ready for. Insubordination. Starvation. A cruel winter. A woman on her bed—literally—, not so much. And she would need to pay another visit to the doctor for her sore back to pay for that. To pay for stupidity and weakness.

_At Briggs only the strong survive._

_Where is your strength, Armstrong?_ She asked herself, as she opened the door to the room. Her heart always forgot to beat when she did so late at night, after so many hours working with Miles until he left and frowned at her, then kept on giving it her best. It eventually calmed down as she stepped in, took off her boots, and settled on the floor, her new home. A much better home.

Today was no different. The breath was knocked out of her, then it returned before she could feel anxious. The sight continued to be shocking, nevertheless. The girl hobbled all the blankets and slept all curled up, like she was afraid the monster at the end of the bed would lick her toes.

Olivier sighed. Such a little thing. Another one of her could fit in the bed, which wasn’t precisely large as far as beds went.

Late as it was—later than usual—today she took her clothes off. Sleeping in them all the time couldn’t be good. And perhaps wearing actual sleepwear would help her body remember it was supposed to fall asleep and not lay awake, thinking about things outside of her control.

She was caught with her pants down, literally.

Zinnia turned on the bed, opened her eyes, and upon sensing that Olivier was there, she sat on the mattress, rubbing her face. She wasn’t used to getting her sleep interrupted.

“What time is it?” she asked in a mutter.

Olivier didn’t bother covering herself. Dark, again.

“Four in the morning,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

“I fell asleep.” Zinnia yawned, like a kitten. All wrinkly nose and teeth. “I wanted… to wait for you.”

“What for?”

“The sleeping situation. You must be uncomfortable down there.”

Olivier growled.

“Just go back to sleep.”

“I’m serious,” Zinnia said in her sleepiest of voices. “Switch with me.”

Olivier’s mouth dropped.

“It’s only fair,” Zinnia continued.

“Explain to me how. The floor is not that bad a place to sleep on.”

“I know. That’s why I want to switch with you.” Zinnia said. Then she yawned again.

“Listen, I’ve no time for this now. Will you just get back in bed?”

“General—”

“I’m not your general.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Are you always this annoying?”

“Answer me this: if it were the other way around, would you let me sleep on the floor?”

Unbeknownst to Zinnia, Olivier felt it was an unfair question. Because, if their roles were turned around, of fucking course she wouldn’t let her take a patch of cold floor. Maybe someone else, but not her. Not a girl used to comfort and niceness.

_Lies,_ she told herself off. _Anybody else would be sleeping here. But this girl isn’t anybody else. What’s the harm in admitting it?_

Miles, Buccaneer, judgment, death. That was the harm.

If it were the other way around, would Zinnia be doing this too? Or would she have let Olivier find her own luck in the middle of the blizzard?

Probably the latter.

But it was four am. And Olivier needed sleep like she needed air. And nothing was helping. Especially not this. She thought about her back, about the hours she spent sitting down on an office, about the uncertainty and tiredness of this war that began but never got anywhere. And she caved in.

She just wanted to sleep. Why did this girl have to care so much? Couldn’t she just take the fucking bed without complaining? Couldn’t she just take all of this gratefully and in silence? Was that truly so hard?

She exhaled in the end. Why did she always cede? What did this woman have that Olivier didn’t feel she was capable of conquering?

“Fine,” she ended up saying. “But just for tonight.”

“We can rotate, if that makes you feel more comfortable,” Zinnia said, getting of the bed slowly, standing next to her in almost complete darkness. “I just don’t want to see you in pain because of me.”

Olivier’s entire mold of existence melted.

What? What had she just heard?

She sat down on the mattress she both missed and couldn’t let herself to miss, and she looked at Zinnia as she got comfortable on the planks on wood. She was condoning this. She was an active participant of it. And she would pay dearly—she would pay, she wanted to pay.

_I just don’t want to see you in pain because of me._

“That’s fine,” she said, lying on her back. She didn’t dare move, like she would be letting a dangerous beast out in doing so.

_I just don’t want to see you in pain because of me._

That sentence would resonate that night in Olivier’s dreams, and for longer, even, in her waking thoughts. You didn’t just recover from hearing such a thing coming from a perfect stranger.

Or… maybe Zinnia was no longer a perfect stranger. Maybe she was that weird person that was in your life a minimum amount and still ended up affecting it.

But not a stranger. Not anymore. Olivier wasn’t sure when that change had taken place, yet she was positive it had.

_I just don’t want to see you in pain because of me…_ How could she not be sure after this?

How could she not be sure, after she finally dared bury her face in the pillow and found nothing but the certainty that it smelled like the flower girl?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god I'd completely forgotten that I gave Buccaneer a first name in this chapter XD. You can't even imagine how much fun that day was, getting to choose the most ridiculous and yet slightly dignified name
> 
> also, for some reason, I really like this chapter, even in hindsight. I like how silly it is, at heart <3


	21. The past is my closet

The morning brought her nothing new. A feeling in her stomach she couldn’t shake completely, and the realization that if it didn’t move elsewhere, she would have to house it, nurture it, call it her own.

A feeling with a name and possibly a surname, and a life beyond the four walls of Briggs. A feeling that became harder and harder to repudiate. Especially that morning, especially after the night before.

Olivier rose early, as she used to. And nothing hurt. And she, for once, didn’t feel like the few hours of sleep she’d gotten had been insufficient. She had slept immersed in youth like she hadn’t tasted in a long time.

But as soon as she had sat on the mattress that no longer felt as just hers, she saw Zinnia curled up in a tiny ball on the floor, with the rough blankets wrapped around her in a twisted mess, and her breath caught from guilt.

And it wasn’t a common emotion for her. She led with pride, she conquered in anger, and she lived by duty and diligence. Guilt was never allowed entrance, because it had no place in her life. Sometimes, of course, her mistakes led to one or two especially sleepless nights and restless days, but she never felt this terribly anguished about it. She had killed, she would kill again, and yet that hadn’t tortured her this intensely back in the day—or, at least, not in this very manner. Death was always something to feel over, but life… life in its delicateness made Olivier fear her own choices in order to do right by it.

And last night she had forfeited her own promises and let the girl take the floor.

She almost picked Zinnia up from there now to dump her on the bed, carelessly. _You landed me here, now take that. Rest easy. I want no involvement in this._

But she didn’t. She put her clothes on, tightened the laces on her boots, and got down to the kitchens. Perhaps she should’ve waken Zinnia up, since she worked there and should already be up and serving breakfast, but for some reason she felt incapable of such a crime. The girl had stayed up for hours just to suggest this new change of plan. How could Olivier pay her back with this? How could she even do a thing to disrupt her sleep?

If she had seen this scene from the outside rather than being the one to live it, Olivier would’ve yelled at herself for a long time. Since when did she allow for this kind of thing to happen?

At the kitchens, though, she recovered her will to yell at people in general when she saw the chaos one absence had ensued. People pooling at the back of the room, complaining loudly and arguing because the girl wasn’t there and suddenly no one knew how to work a coffee machine and a spatula. She grabbed her own cup, took some grainy bread for herself, and yelled at them:

“Do you people seriously not know how to behave in public?”

“But, sir, how are we supposed to do anything if she’s not here?” someone asked.

“And how did you do things before she wasn’t? Did you perhaps not know how to serve yourselves, you idiots?”

At first she wanted nothing but silence and space to calm herself down. Fools, all of them. And she was the biggest one of them all. Pretending to be fine and never thinking of why she wasn’t. The girl. Another girl after too long. She’d entirely forgotten how this went, or how it could go.

She hadn’t even been able to wake Zinnia up. Who did that? Who, in the middle of this rusty nowhere, stopped on their tracks to show kindness for just anybody? None of this made sense.

When she saw where she had taken herself, trapped among books and dust, she wanted to stay in there forever. Until she remembered what being there meant. Hiding, like a school girl from ages ago. She was thirty-five. Her teenage years were barely a shadow to her present, yet she’d been entirely swallowed by a new darkness.

It was one thing to flirt with Miles just because she knew it would piss him off, not because she ever had any interest. He was a man, after all. It was one thing to pretend to be above these things, to strive never to care romantically about other people. But this? This absurdity couldn’t be blamed on anything else but fact.

_I have brought home a taste of my own medicine,_ she thought.

Home. When had she had one in the first place? The mansion? This fort? The academy? She had known nothing else. Her homes had never been places but people, and the last time had been a long time ago. She had never thought she would be able to choose her own family again.

Not that she’d actively chosen it this time.

She sat down at the table she’d long ago called her own, and after a while she grabbed a random book out of the shelves. She dusted it first, then sat down to read.

The concepts weren’t unknown to her, she’d just never actually found them useful or appealing. Alex had. Alex had made his entire life revolve around magic and his fucking biceps. Like he was the only one with the family surname—and he might as well just have been, he was the only man of the Armstrong siblings.

Her merits had always weighed less than his, for the simple fact that she was no man, and she was too old and too rude to ever amount to anything. Back then, she’d still been in the academy, and her graduation was nearing. Her brother’s calling had tasted like betrayal.

It would always, from then on, taste like betrayal.

She had never been able to look at him the same way. He’d become mama’s boy.

_“How wonderful, dear!” their mother said the day Alex had announced his new goal proudly as ever. “Our boy wants to be an alchemist!”_

_Mr Armstrong was sitting at their living room table reading a newspaper. He paid attention to little else that wasn’t printed words or the radio. His family was always only background noise._

_“Ah yes, yes, marvelous,” he said._

_“Isn’t he a little young?” Olivier herself had said. She’d already known, at Alex’s age, that she wanted to join the military, and like her before him, he would still have to wait a few years. She wasn’t even sure he would like it there._

_“That’s a small matter,” their mother said. “He’s such an able boy, he might even be accepted earlier!”_

_Little spoiled Alex had been saying he wanted to do this ever since she had enrolled. And what was worse, he’d worked for it. The books in the mansion had piled up, and every time she’d looked for something to read, she only found alchemy everywhere. He hadn’t even meant to be a soldier, just… an alchemist. And nobody had seen the difference or even cared about it but her._

_Who by that time had already been top of her class. Who by that time had already gotten on the nerves of every superior. Who by that time was hiding her own life from her family because no one wanted to understand._

_“I will bring honor to this family, like my sister before me,” Alex said. But those words weren’t the main focus of anything. Because their parents saw no honor in what she’d done, only a spot on their stainless reputation._

_She’d had to rise above it all. That’s what that life had taught her. Homeschooled by the best, dressed by the best, and still her mother would forever be disappointed that Olivier wasn’t what they’d expected of her. A girl of such a wealthy family, about to graduate from military academy, husbandless and without attending university. She was a disgrace, not the one to bring honor. When she was present at family parties, she was kept on the side like a pet, sitting alone at the table until she emerged, her height setting her apart from the crowd. Her father had still tried to introduce her to young impressionable men—the poor man had never been too observant of what went on in his family’s life—and, luckily, he’d never looked too disappointed when they all walked away, scared and disgusted in equal parts at the eccentricity of the eldest of the Armstrong family._

_Her mother scoffed at Alex’s words._

_“What honor could_ she _bring?” she said. “A black sheep won’t ever belong, my dear Alex.”_

_”She has followed her calling, and I daresay she is quite successful.”_

_“Successful?”_

_“Why. Is she not, mother?”_

_“_ You _will be. Because that’s how things are meant to be. Not… her. She should stay home and learn to behave like a lady.”_

_Olivier had left the room then. She had no intention of hearing this again, now in front of her brother, who was still impressionable enough that their mother’s words could change the way he saw her. True, Alex was clingy and wouldn’t leave her alone if she was home, but she still didn’t want him to become the person their mother kept meaning for him to be. A person who would see Olivier for who she was, a woman that swam against the current and would always do so, because defying them all was apparently more important than being in the family._

Olivier didn’t think she’d sat down ‘like a lady’ in… literally longer than that. Now, her only reflex when she was on a chair was to keep her legs always apart. She’d never been a lady. She’d never wanted to be, either.

It was all about people and what they wanted, always contrasting with what _she_ wanted.

_“Olivier,” Alex called after her._

_“What do you want now?” she said, without turning around. “Scram, kid.”_

_“You know she didn’t mean it.”_

_At this, she spun on her heels to frown at him._

_“Oh, she did. It doesn’t matter now. There’s little she can do about it.”_

_“I just wanted to ask you… if you thought this was worth pursuing.”_

_She hadn’t looked down at him that time. He had still been her sweet but disastrous little brother, a little duckling who would follow her everywhere. She had always been his favorite. Amue and Strongine didn’t really pay much attention to him, they were busy dating the men their mother had chosen, going down the only path that had been set for them. Alex liked that his older sister didn’t._

_She tried to imagine him going into instruction. Her body had learned to get used to the severity of the force, the punishments and the lack of praise, the brutal sexism, the long hours of work that didn’t pay off. But Alex was… soft, in all senses of the word. His body was weak, and he was too used to the simple rich life. He had never crawled through the dirt, he had never had his clothes stolen, his intellect challenged by fools who thought themselves better on account of their gender._

_Was this something he wanted for himself—truly—or just another one of those things he did because of her?_

_This time, Olivier didn’t make a face at him. She would, many many times in the future. But not now._

_Because where he stood, she had as well._

_“What do you hope to get out of it?” she asked him instead._

_He paused to think, and she took that as a good sign. That meant he valued her opinion enough to not just say the first thing that came to mind. He knew the importance of well-thought honesty._

_“I will protect the weak and march alongside the strong to build a better country. I will make our family proud.”_

_She laughed heartily._

_“That’s all? I’d been hoping for something a little more… topic-related.”_

_He looked puzzled._

_“Was that not?”_

_“Are you ready to risk your life, time and time again, for people who hate you, people who look down on you, people who don’t want to be saved?”_

_He went quiet all of a sudden. It appeared that had never made it into his precious calculations. He knew many rules of the alchemists by heart, but he had never thought of this?_

_“This is for life, Alex. There’s no going back; do, and you’ll be a deserter. If you want this, want it for a personal reason. Because the world—and your precious mother—won’t always be proud of you and your sacrifices.”_

_Then he asked her something that threw her off completely, something she’d expected less than his compliance._

_“Why did you do it?”_

_And she hadn’t been brave and soldier-like enough to answer honestly, to tell her sixteen-year-old brother that she’d joined the military to run away from home, to prove her worth somewhere where it wouldn’t be deemed nothing, even if it wouldn’t be talked up either; that she’d joined because their mother would never let her exist as Olivier, as the daughter she hadn’t raised but merely watched grow up in disdain._

_A lesbian and a soldier was better than just a closeted lesbian_ _. She would gain power, and experience, and she would learn a trade where she wouldn’t be required to keep her legs closed when she sat, or chew demurely, or learn the subtle dances of flirting with wealthy and wealthily stinking men. She would develop her personality against tide and wind and dust, and she would do it her way, she would fight the battles she herself would choose._

_How could Olivier tell Alex—sweet, little Alex—that she was soon to become a soldier because she hadn’t been able to stand being just a daughter?_

_And so she didn’t. Not that time, not ever._

_“Mind your own business,” she said. “And mind it well, or abstain from joining.”_

_Later on, she attended her own graduation alone, dressed in permanent blue, and she was given her final instructions before leaving the academy for good. She had been assigned a post up north, the least desirable destination, the last place everyone wanted to go to. Top of her class, graduating early… Even the military couldn’t stomach a woman threatening to climb up the ranks so early as her results pointed at, so they’d sent her to the only place where they thought all of that excellence would be crushed out of her. They’d really thought they could teach her a lesson, they’d really thought their influence on her existed at all._

_And two years later, when she was already well-settled on Fort Briggs, a few ranks higher than anybody had expected, she’d received notice that her little brother Alex was training to be a soldier, like she before him._

_She’d never seen him after her own graduation, and after Ishval… she wished she never had to again._

Now, though, here she was, wasting time on the memory of him. _That fucking traitor_ , she thought. _I warned him and yet there he went. And they said I would be the one to bring dishonor._

She would never forgive him that. She had forgiven many other things, years ago. Just not this. _Not this, Alex,_ Olivier thought. _You can’t say I didn’t warn you._

She slammed the book closed. All those paragraphs she’d read about alchemy were starting to make her head hurt, and not precisely because of their content but because of the emotional backlash.

_A soldier and an alchemist_ , she thought. _A deserter._

Her brother had become those three words, and the memory of a scrawny kid who once had aimed to be like her. When she thought of him now, she couldn’t imagine him as a grown man. She still saw the almost seven feet of boyhood he’d been when she’d last seen him. Sometimes, though, soldiers from other settlements spoke hushedly about him—the vastness of a man who had cowered in the face of Ishvalan terrors and found shelter in bureaucracy and gentler uses of his alchemy. Their words about Alex were never unkind, but she couldn’t ignore the contempt in their voices, and she wished she could intensify it until it made her sore in the throat. A man should never leave the battlefield without an order for retreat, no matter his connections and no matter his ties to the rest. Others, nevertheless, spoke of him in other manners, and she pretended she wasn’t listening.

A soldier, an alchemist, a deserter. And a kind man.

She wondered if he was all muscle now, if he still kept something of his surname in him, or if he’d become something else entirely, like she had. 

* * *

 

Before she knew it, her methods had worked. Thinking about something different brought something different to her routine, and for a moment she was swept away from her melancholy and her dread. Duty called and she answered quickly as always.

When she was called down to the Engineering Department, she’d been somewhere mulling over her life choices, and she welcomed the change gladly. If she had to hear another one of her subordinates complaining about food or the cold or the schedule, she was going to begin contemplating the thought of burying herself in sword-fighting until winter was over. They could handle themselves for all she cared.

Luckily, and at last, a new and much improved version of the Briggs tank was fresh out of the oven, and as she had commanded them to do a long time ago, if the beast worked, she wanted to be the one to give it the green light. She hoped it would be the last green light in this project. They had gotten their hands on the special fuel the engineers had insisted on, they had repaired previous defects on the exterior, they had made the inside ample and comfortable, and they had retouched the ammunition several times already.

This had to be it.

It wasn’t like they couldn’t win a fight on an open field, especially in the mountains, even more especially in the winter. But Olivier had always thought it a good idea to make it very clear they were the ones on the border, and that they would remain there much much longer than Drachma would exist as a nation.

_You want to step on Amestrian grounds?_ She would say from the top of the tallest peak. _Over my dead body! I will dig our flag onto your barren lands before you can even decide you’re scared enough to run like dogs back to your houses._

That victory was nothing but a distant dream. The true development would be to stay where she was, defend the border like she always had, and teach the next generations well so that they wouldn’t embarrass her after she left her post.

Olivier found that the news of the tank being operative and successfully so had spread over the fort. There were a few gatherings of her men, who she assumed were on their breaks, animatedly discussing the model and wishing out loud they’d be allowed to drive one.

The man in charge came to shake her hand.

“It’s all ready for you, sir,” he said. “Whenever you give the order we shall start.”

She shook his hand respectfully and nodded, indicating that they could begin at once. The engineer cleared his throat to ask for silence, then briefly commented on the display that would take place, and finished by advising that everyone stayed within a safety distance of the tank.

Then, he turned to her again.

“General, if you would like to test it out yourself…”

She raised an eyebrow. The first version of this machine had burst out in flames, she didn’t really want to be in the belly of one if that happened again, but it looked solid enough, and there had been plenty of modifications since that first model.

“Very well, then,” she said.

On reflex, he offered her a hand to help her up. She snorted to herself and climbed in with enviable elegance. She knew he would regret that till the day he died just by the sight of his face after he got in as well.

She also knew, at long last, that this tank was definitely the best one yet, and that she didn’t have that much to comment on for more changes.

At her command, it glided, its aim was spotless, and it withstood open fire as well just like she had wished it. When the test was done, the interior of the tank smelled faintly like gunpowder, and she could barely contain her pride. Finally, a wrap on this program and on to something else.

Something wet and itchy drenched her stomach in anxiety. If this was over, she would have time again to do something she knew she shouldn’t do. 

* * *

 

Miles and Buccaneer arrived to the trials of the tank later than the rest of them, but still got to witness the best moments of it. Buccaneer roared instead of giggled when he saw the size of the bullets it would spit out at the enemy, and Miles had to politely remind him that it wasn’t very likely he would ever get to drive one of those. Neither of them would.

Yet it still made them proud, to imagine the man who got to follow Olivier’s orders while inside a tank, on an open battlefield covered in snow and ash against the Drachman.

When Buccaneer’s stomach growled, on top of the noise of the machine, Miles nudged him with his elbow, trying to be discreet, since this was more or less a formal environment.

“You just ate,” Miles complained.

Buccaneer made a face.

“You call that food?”

“Not this again. You can’t _possibly_ still be talking shit about this.”

“Is the food getting any better?”

Miles sighed. “No.”

“Then, yes, to answer your very witty question, I still talk shit about it. Because it _is_ shit. Whoever hired that girl to work in the kitchens has very questionable taste in cuisine.”

Miles looked at him, as if saying ‘we both know who’.

“About that…” he tried to look completely enraptured in the moving tank that seemed to be about to come to a stop any second, meaning he had to be quick about this or his head might roll if Olivier heard. “I think there’s something up with her. I think she might be…” Miles kept on, lowering his voice a little more in case someone was eavesdropping. “You know, the _writer_.”

Buccaneer, too, kept his eyes on the tank as if he was paying attention to nothing else.

“The terrible cook?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Are you saying this disaster of a person—” Olivier opened the hatch and got to the floor, awaited for the engineer and they both remained by the iron beast, talking. “—is the same person that wrote our boss the sexy stuff?”

Miles flinched hugely.

“I definitely did not see… sexy stuff in there.”

Buccaneer smirked out of the corner of his lips.

“You did not look thoroughly enough.” Which was about saying the same as ‘I assure you, there is sexy stuff in there’.

“Thoroughly…” Miles laughed. “I didn’t even know you knew that word.”

“I hate you, Miles.” Buccaneer said. “Now, look like you’re _very_ interested in the metal plates of the tank. She is… _coming_.”

“No, she’s not…”  Miles grumbled.

Buccaneer almost laughed.

“And who’s the perv now? Coming, he says…” Buccaneer chuckles to himself, even while standing straight as a candle stick as his boss comes his way. “Everything alright, General?”

She just glared at him, confirming that indeed it was all alright, and as soon as she was out of earshot, Buccaneer patted Miles’s back.

“I’m proud of you, kid. Finally, you’re catching up with the times.” 

* * *

  _It’s not real. You’ve just been under a lot of pressure lately, that is absolutely all that’s going on._

But the fact that she had to convince herself of it was not a good sign. Zinnia worked diligently, because her choices had narrowed down to just enduring in silence. And she did so while knowing that it was working in vain.

Briggs loathed her with all its heart. And she let them hate her. What else could she do? Run back into the snow, disappear?

She’d given it more thought than she would admit to anyone: leaving. She had crossed half a continent before, for less urgent reasons, she could do it again, this time in sore need of shelter. Just for the winter, though. Her pride wouldn’t have to suffer any longer than that. Whatever reaction she would get from her family—her mother—she would only have to stomach for a few months.

Spring wasn’t that far away, was it? Almost two whole seasons away. Practically nothing. A mere stroll.

Then she’d thought about the butchery, about cleaning a house she couldn’t bear to call her own, about Anthony thinking he could appropriate her time again like nothing had happened, about her ghosts inhabiting all the empty space she’d left behind.

Going there would be a cowardly move, and almost as good as admitting defeat. Was she even fighting in anything she couldn’t afford to lose at?

_Yes,_ her brain answered immediately.

_Yes, what?_

_Just… yes._

She probably was involved in more than just one conflict, more than one ‘just yes’. And the main one now consisted of not letting it transpire that she felt dwarfed among all these men with such nitpicky taste in food, that she wanted out but not too far or for too long. She wanted to return to her yellow house, with all of her things and a bed she didn’t have to be on rotation to sleep in.

So, she had gathered all the courage she didn’t think existed anymore, and she had made a choice. A very sensible one that shouldn’t terrify her enough to have her rehearsing all her words inside her head while on the same corridor where the door to where she wanted to go was.

_Just… open it, say hi, be nice, and demand what you want._

So simple, so to the point. And she could not move a muscle in that direction. She would rather make a fool out of herself and stutter and blush before she entered that room standing tall and proud and speaking clearly that she no longer desired her current post.

Those were the exact words she’d chosen: _I no longer desire my current post._

She flinched when a soldier walked past her. She barely managed a muffled greeting that fell on deaf ears.

_Great,_ Zinnia thought. _There goes my self-esteem. If there was any left, that is._

She took a deep breath, reached for the handle, then took three steps back, until her back was against the wall.

_One door will stop me? One fucking door? When I’m tolerating the worst of the worst just so I won’t freeze?_

She could hear voices inside the room, arguing about something, whatever it was. Maybe she should come back another time, considering this last bit of information. She did not want to come in and ridicule herself. The proper behavior would be to apologize for the interruption and leaving, but who in their right mind would go into that room knowing beforehand there was something not privy to them going on there?

Nobody.

She regained the territory she’d lost in those three steps, and she slammed the handle down, pushing the door open.

_Look firm, look like you mean to be here,_ she reminded herself.

Who would go into that room knowing there was something in there that was none of her business?

Zinnia would. Zinnia _did._

The argument did not lose intensity once she had. It was like the participants hadn’t even noticed her. She thought to herself that doors should make more noise when they’re opened.

“… how many more times do you need to hear this?” Olivier was saying, red in the face. “No! Should I write it down?”

“All I ask is for something else to do. Each mission leaves for weeks at a time. How long does it take to plan one? Less than that!” Buccaneer replied. “During that time I could be instructed on the proper art of driving.”

At that, Olivier punched the table. She hadn’t found that last bit funny, apparently.

“ _Buccaneer_. If you think you can come here repeatedly, make demands—” There went Zinnia’s strategy, then. “—and threaten to waste my time, then you are very right and there’s nothing I can do about it. But if you so much as dare imagine you will get anything you want out of this, then I advise you to reassess.”

“It’s not fair!” he complained. “Miles, back me up!”

“Miles is … working at the moment,” said Miles, sitting very calmly on his chair, revising numbers.

Buccaneer crossed his arms. He was huge, Zinnia had to shift a little bit to the right to see Miles’s face.

“It’s not fair,” Buccaneer repeated.

“And you’re not six,” Olivier rebuked. “Find a hobby, make friends, find a house for next year. I don’t care.”

“Where’s the usefulness talk now, sir? That is what we do here,” Buccaneer said, a little more serious. “We prove ourselves useful to the task at hand. And I spend more time spreading gossip—”

Miles did laugh a tiny laugh now.

“—than preparing the incursions,” Buccaneer finished. “Therefore, half of my time here on Briggs is time I could spend doing something useful.”

Olivier sighed, and Zinnia saw her chance, she stepped to the right, hands behind her back, and said a meek:

“Um… I’m sorry to interrupt, could I have a word?”

 The two men immediately looked at her as if saying she had stepped where she shouldn’t have.

Olivier slowly removed her closed fist from the table, dusted her uniform, and sat down. _Nothing to see here,_ she thought.

Then she lifted her eyebrows at her until Zinnia realized that was her shot at talking:

_Aren’t these two going to… leave?_

Apparently, no. Miles had the tact to return to his task. Zinnia had gotten to know him a bit more since he’d been assigned to show her around. Quiet, diligent, and didn’t pry—much.

At least he pretended _not_ to, which was a change from over half of the rest of them. Buccaneer, worst of them all. She could see the thirst for gossip in his small black eyes.

“Well?” Olivier urged her on.

“I… I would like to request a change of…”

“Of?”

“Of job.”

The way Olivier was inspecting her, Zinnia would’ve thought she’d asked for the moon on a platter.

“Can that be arranged?” she asked as calmly as she could.

“I suppose so, yes,” Olivier said, weighing her choices. Here she had a man who was angry at her for not agreeing to almost the same thing this other woman was asking her for, and said lady who didn’t know what she had just stepped into. Then, it came to her. “Any preferences?”

The same question from the last time. And this time Zinnia had an answer ready. Not in vain had she been paying attention to the general functioning of the fort.

“I saw your cleaning shifts are quite disorganized,” she said.

Miles made a face, and Zinnia panicked.

_Shit, shit, shit. He’s the one who schedules all of that, I forgot._

“Because of the time you spend on routine patrols,” she finished, trying to make herself sound cool and confident. “So, if you’re looking for someone to take that job full-time, I’m your girl.”

Olivier blushed for absolutely no reason at all. She blinked a couple of times.

“Do you… have any experience?” she asked tentatively. She did not want another onion disaster, this time turned a dust disaster. She did not want a disaster—period.

“Not in such a big dwelling,” Zinnia said. “But I’ll handle myself fine.”

She nodded as well, as Olivier inspected her with slit eyes.

“Okay, then…” Olivier said. “Buccaneer, you’ll take her post at the kitchens in your… free time.”

Buccaneer’s face perfectly conveyed his dismay.

“I… beg your _pardon_?”

“Kitchens. Didn’t you hear me?”

“No, I heard you fine, sir, I just—”

She smiled a sly smile.

“Make yourself _useful_.”

He did not move, although he sure knew a dismissal when he heard one. Miles had to cover his mouth with his hand not to laugh out loud there in front of god and everybody.

“Is that all?” Olivier asked Zinnia.

She gulped.

“Sure is,” she said. “Thank you for your time, General.”

“Likewise,” Olivier said before she could stop herself. When she realized she’d said something that stupid, she opened her eyes dramatically but said nothing.

Zinnia waited a couple of seconds there, not knowing what to do. she had a big bulky man  standing in the way, practically oozing hot steam out of his nostrils because of her outtimed request, and Olivier looked… all the more worrying.

This place was eerily weird.

She left right away, almost tripping over her own feet.

She didn’t hear, then, what happened later. And thank heavens for that.

“At this point I think it’s safe to say you just have something against my petitions,” Buccaneer pointed out as soon as the girl was out of earshot.

“Absolutely,” Olivier said, regaining her normal levels of ‘I am boss’. “They are rude, misinformed, and repetitive as _hell._ And if that’s all, Buccaneer, there’s the door _._ ”

“I’m not even asking for you to change my assigned job,” he pressed on. “I’m asking for you to let me engage in a second one. And yet…” Miles looked down at his papers, not daring to make eye contact with his friend. This was about to burst, and not in a nice way. “This… _snot_ comes along, sweeps in like this is the motherfucking library, and you concede? I don’t recognize you, Olivier.”

_Neither do I,_ she agreed in the privacy of her own mind. But she couldn’t out loud. She never could.

Closeted, even now.

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Julian,” she said calmly.

Miles did look up now. Maybe it was not going to blow up unpleasantly in his face. Buccaneer didn’t look about to say anything… inappropriate. Yet.

“If I may… It is curious that the girl gets some… privileges.”

“Privileges?” she mouthed angrily. Caged like a lion in an open-bar prison. That’s what she was now. A lion between bars. “Name one privilege I have given her.”

Buccaneer didn’t even blink. He just listed them off the top of his head before Miles could even think about the question.

“Shelter for a prolonged amount of time, private room, because she is definitely never spotted sleeping where the men do—” Olivier breathed easy knowing nobody had seen them sharing _her_ room. “—first the job we all begged you to get her far away from, then giving her another one when _she_ asked, and on top of it all you’re _nice_ to her.”

It sounded, to her, like he really felt bad she was supposedly being nice to other people and not him. Was he forgetting all the years when it had been the other way around, when she’d fought tooth and nail to get him to see her as an equal?

“I’m never nice,” she said now.

“Then the rest are all true, boss.”

She stared at him right in the eye. She had to crane her neck up in order to do so, but she did it gladly.

“You want privileges, Buccaneer?”

“Yes!”

“Fine! Get in the fucking tank if you so desire! I won’t stand there and watch you get blown to bits on your first day out against Drachma.”

Buccaneer sought confirmation in Miles’s gaze. “Is that a yes?”

“No, it’s not a yes!” Olivier bellowed. “And if I see you one more time around here with such filth in your mouth instead of words, you’re out, understand? I’ll write a goddamn report if I have to, and you’ll be out before you’re supposed to.”

“You’re definitely not nice, boss.” Buccaneer said after staring at her for some seconds. Then he left, without another word.

Miles waited a few seconds, too, before he casually said:

“You should rest. You haven’t taken a break in hours.”

She sat down—rather, let herself drop on the chair—and growled.

“If you’re going to side with him,” she replied, “do so _quietly_.”

He seemed to take the hint, returning to his chore in silence. A silence which he broke again in a short while. He felt, after so long, that he wouldn’t really be getting involved in business that wasn’t his own if he spoke his mind to her. In her usual demeanor, Olivier wasn’t as uncompromising.

“He is right, General,” he said. “About everything, if you ask me.”

“I _didn’t_.” _I’ve never asked any of you._

“Even for Buccaneer,” Miles muttered to himself now, “that was a whole lot of ‘right’ to pretend wasn’t there.”


	22. Gold and wood

“Are you really preparing for war?” Zinnia asked Miles one day, when she’d gone to the noticeboard to see what her shift was this week. She’d caught him literally picking up the printed copies to nail them in.

“We’re already prepared for it,” Miles answered, laughing a little at the question and the curiosity behind it, or—since things were what they were—more boredom than curiosity. “Now we’re just waiting. We can’t actually engage in it first. We defend, not attack.”

“That’s… weird.” Normally, weren’t both sides allowed to start the war? She needed to get back to reading as soon as possible, so she wouldn’t be made a fool out of herself by other people because she wasn’t caught up yet, that ability belonged only to her so far.

Miles shrugged. Maybe being caught up wasn’t a big deal if the most normal of all of them dudes wasn’t gasping at her naiveté.

“It is what it is. It used to be worse, some time ago. Apparently, Drachma’s just playing with us now.”

Like defending a border could in any way be compared to getting stuck during a game of chess.

“Sounds like Drachma,” Zinnia said, having absolutely no idea what she was even saying. All she knew about them could be summarized in: cold, north, border, Briggs stops them and always will.

“You needn’t worry, though. You won’t be expected to participate in actual war.”

“Yeah, that’s a … relief.”

If she happened to just be walking by when either country engaged in combat, would it really matter if Zinnia had permission to fight on it? Wouldn’t she technically be a target anyway, just because she lived under the same roof as them?

“It should be. This,” he said, “doesn’t happen often, you know? How many times did you think Briggs has welcomed civilians in?”

“I feel compelled to answer ‘never’?”

“And that would be correct.” Miles nodded, approving. “You being here is a first. And you didn’t exactly get off to a good start. Nobody really knows what to think of the… situation.”

She shrugged. He was very much not nailing his schedules to the board because he was talking to her. This was the most amount of attention she had received since she’d arrived.

“There’s not much to think about. I’m here, I’m working to pay for my stay, and I’m not getting in anybody’s way.”

“But you’re a civilian anyway,” Miles pointed out. “You’re a foreigner.”

She raised her eyebrows. Did this mean they thought less of her because she was under their alleged care but wouldn’t fight along their side in the hypothetical case Drachma decided to bomb them?

Like hell she was going to be downgraded to a second-class citizen by dudes who lived in the middle of nowhere and were both terrified of and in love with the person who kept them alive.

“I’ve probably been living north longer than some of your recruits,” she said, crossing her arms for emphasis.

“I don’t mean foreigner geographically,” Miles said, laughing softly at her again. “In a way, you’ve infiltrated our numbers because of an invitation from a superior. But you took a job that’s highly valued, and you performed… poorly, let’s say. That leaves a mark.”

“I fail to see how that’s my fault.”

Miles shrugged again and couldn’t help but agree with her a little.

“That’s how it works around here. Better get used to it.”

Then he finished putting up the new schedules and left her alone.

Was that the most she could hope for? Just… some vague conversation, then the other person taking off. Miles was, by far, the most polite individual in the fort. He answered her occasional—very occasional—questions and didn’t look annoyed when she needed to be shown somewhere or explained something, and he never treated her like vermin, like others might feel slightly tempted to. But he still did so just because it was his literal job, appointed by General Armstrong herself, not because he _liked_ Zinnia. He didn’t have to like her, no one did. Tolerating her was enough.

Nobody had developed any fondness for her, though. She saw other people interacting with each other, spending time together at lunch, or even walking places side by side, sharing chores and moments. Not everybody, and especially not the new recruits who felt just as lost as she did, probably. But the main bulk of population did, and it was a huge bulk, in all the senses of the word.

Their size, their innate need to be loud and mark their territory, their presupposition that she _was_ a pathogen they needed to steer clear off.

They made her wish she was even smaller than she already was, invisible, quiet and obedient so nobody would look at her twice.

Two people did look at her, Miles out of politeness and decency, and Olivier… because that’s what she had always done. Intimidation via eye contact.

Two people, in a fort with hundreds.

Now that she was cleaning, at least, she had no more complains coming her way, and she had attained at last that much desired invisibility. The only people who might have more trouble with her presence were the men she shared shifts with, but nobody truly said a word to her other than curt greetings on their way in or out. Their shifts were shorter, because they had other places to be, so in the end it always just came down to her, a broom or a mop and a silent room.

And it consumed her. Gently, without any hurry in the world, because it had the power to. It lured her into nothingness.

Not much time had to pass before her mind learned to empty itself of all thought and just carry out her tasks mechanically. She sat down at empty tables at lunch and dinner, messing around with food her stomach didn’t feel like eating, and most times she did not even bother to start a conversation with whoever would eventually have no choice but to sit with her. Olivier often did, especially at breakfast, and Zinnia debated between wanting to ask her a stupid question to get the two of them to talk or just sulk about the fact that now the only times she saw the general were during meals, when nothing much ever happened, and in their room—Olivier’s room—at night when they were too tired to even look at each other, not that Zinnia didn’t look sometimes anyway.

She understood the general had more important things to deal with than her. She was a _general,_ for fuck’s sake, it was expected of her. Zinnia had just sort of been waiting around for that moment when they would be allowed to resume their mutual glaring or their mutual curiosity or just _something—_ anything that wasn’t a job and a bed.

It had never happened, though. And things didn’t look like they were heading in that direction. She would have to look for friends, or the Olivier equivalent ( _ha!_ ) elsewhere. In the crowds of loud men who didn’t care for her existence? In Miles’s patient but otherwise distant behavior?

Wasn’t loneliness just… easier? Wasn’t she supposed to simply endure, wait the winter out in silence, as her penitence?

_For what, you fool?_ She asked herself. _I don’t understand what crime you think you’ve committed._

Running. Running had always been the word tattooed on her forehead. Her identification number, the reason she was here. She’d run and she’d been caught in the nets of a stop sign, and she’d had to be rescued and groomed and given a bed and warm food. For wanting to run and not being able to, she deserved to be caged inside a wall between mountains and snow.

And, eventually, she had to run from cleaning too.

She lost count, as weeks passed, of how many times she’d sheepishly sneaked into Olivier’s office to ask her—to plead—for a new job, a better one, she hoped at the time. And she never had to argue in her favor or beg, Olivier just… slit her eyes at Zinnia for a few moments, and in the end always let her do as she pleased.

Zinnia came to wonder if Olivier did that because she was tired of her, and she just wanted to be left alone and no longer cared about the means to get to her end. Zinnia wondered if letting her wander the corridors and working at whatever bright shiny thing had grabbed her attention was Olivier’s way out of a conversation.

Because of it, anyway, she was allowed to move freely from task to task, from department to department, to the surprise and dislike of the soldiers.

Zinnia first worked with Miles, adding numbers and drawing grids and reviewing his own work after he’d moved on to something else she couldn’t help with. She spent a week or two down at the laundry station. Once, she was sent to the stables and she hated the smell of the horses so much she couldn’t stand it more than just a few days. Her face continued to burn red when she pushed the door to Olivier’s office again, to come with a request—again.

Eventually, one day of all those many days in which blush and new job merged, Zinnia’s routine in asking changed unexpectedly.

“Back again?” Olivier said, the same way she had for a while now—familiarly. This was the same way she would address a stray cat that kept licking at the empty bowl she refilled every morning to keep it hydrated.

She didn’t look at her, though. She had… things to summarize.

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“You’re aware I can’t just let you keep moving around because you’re… bored, right?”

“I have to work. It’s the rule!”

Olivier looked up at her now.

“You have been given work time and time again. It’s not having work that compels you to come here, it’s having work that you find enjoyable. And that’s done. I have nothing else to offer you that’s within your ability.”

“Fine. The horses it is, then?” She would smell like manure and hay forever. It was fine. A fine price to pay for food and a bed/plank of wood.

“Actually, I was thinking of…” _Not giving you special treatment anymore, confuse these fuckers with something that can’t be farther from the truth._ “… putting you with Buccaneer. You’ve already worked with Miles—”

Miles waved at her without looking up from the book he was reading.

“—and I’m interested in you getting to learn both my adjutants’ trades, just in case.

Miles snorted.

“Are you thinking of giving Buccaneer what he wants?” he asked.

“I’m thinking ahead. He’s working two jobs now. So could you,” She glanced at Zinnia. “Part time, at least, you’ll be with him. There is nothing more important in this fort at the moment than keeping the mountain batches going, keeping track of budgets and making new ones.” Zinnia nodded. “The rest of the time, you’ll be with me.”

Miles choked on his own saliva but said nothing.

Zinnia did:

“Sorry, what?”

“With me.”

“Yes, I heard that part, I wasn’t questioning that, I was just… what do you mean, ‘with you’?”

“You can’t just go around doing what you want.” I _can’t keep allowing you to._ _“_ I’m going to teach you what everybody else here does aside from their assignments. Then, when you’ve learned the basics, you’ll join the patrols like everybody else.”

_So much for not participating in actual warfare,_ Zinnia thought, remembering what Miles had told her earlier. Of course, though, patrolling wasn’t warring, just… prepping for it. _Fucking fantastic. And it involves training. I might as well join the academy._  

* * *

 

“Miles is upstairs,” Buccaneer said without looking at her when she showed up to his department, uniform perfectly cleaned and even shiny, ready for a new job. He was sitting quite unseemly on a handrail, a pencil behind his ear, looking at something that Zinnia thought looked like maps.

“I’m not looking for Miles?” she said. It had been a while since she’d needed him to give her a tour. “I was sent here to help out.”

Buccaneer laughed.

“With what, girl?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Just… to help.”

“I’m not doing anything right now I can’t tackle alone, so…” The ‘shoo’ was implied. Heavily.

“The general thought it might reduce your workload now that you’ve two part-times.”

Buccaneer made a face that perfectly conveyed his disagreement and his vast amount of surprise.

“The… general?” he asked, just to confirm.

“Yeah. The general.”

Buccaneer cleared his throat, clearly lost as to the many different generals that could be making reference to.

“Excuse me for a second.” He got up, punched the papers onto her, and grumbled: “Keep these safe till I’m back. Won’t be long.”

“Oookay.” She said, taking a look of the route maps. So those were all the paths the soldiers took when they were on Mountain Men watch? It didn’t look to her like they were covering the entire border around the mountain range. In fact, it didn’t look as if they were covering _enough._

“And _don’t_ pry,” Buccaneer added. “It’s confidential.”

She tsked and when he was gone added: “Not anymore, it’s not.”

She had a hunch that Buccaneer was heading to Olivier’s office to, yet again, demand explanations he was not getting. And she was right. Buccaneer was a transparent man, there where he lay waste to reality with his automail arm and his boisterousness.

Buccaneer climbed the stairs to the office like he actually stood a chance. Olivier laughed at him this time, and not because she actually found his being there funny.

“This is getting ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much, Buccaneer?”

“Why? Just… why?”

“She wanted a change. You need help now that you’re… busy elsewhere.”

“Which is all you, scheming. General, if you do this for a laugh, wonderful. Everybody’s laughing but me right now. And that girl won’t, either, when she sees what working with me does to the body.”

“Don’t fry her with jokes, will you?”

“I’m not. She’s not staying assigned to me.”

“I have nothing to threaten you with now, Captain. And no intention of doing it again unless you literally force me to. But isn’t this getting old now? I assigned her to you, and you will shut that mouth of yours and take her in, teach her what you can.” She sighed dramatically. “After all, I will need a replacement for you next year.”

He gritted his teeth.

“You expect her to learn my trade in the short time it’ll take her to get tired of it and move on to another one?”

That made Olivier’s ever-showing frown dig into her skin a little more permanently. He was stabbing right where he knew she was weakest, mentioning her lenience towards the girl and her constant job-roaming.

“I _expect_ you to do as a say. Unless you’d like to overthrow me. In which case, bring it on now.” She looked about ready for it, almost hoping for it. Some activity might cheer her up a bit. She’d been doing nothing lately but worry and add numbers and make sure everybody was staying on top of their workloads.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

She sighed again, this time just resigning to the facts.

“I’m making her useful. A Jack of all trades, if you will. She can cook—”

“Oh no, anything but _that_.”

“Fine,” she conceded. “She knows the cleaning routine, she knows how the machinery operates. She knows the basics of accounting and the way schedules are designed. She would have no trouble keeping the animals safe and the rations well-preserved. And now she will get a glimpse into our Mountain Men and the man behind it. I’m making her be useful. Plain as day.”

Buccaneer frowned, not entirely convinced.

“She could sub for any of you now,” she explained. “And as soon as I’m done training her, she will.”

Buccaneer’s frown deepened. That had cleared his doubts to some extent.

“You’re including her in the patrols?”

She nodded.

“I don’t need another soldier. I just need able hands. And if Central doesn’t provide…”

“Except they _do_. And she’s a civilian,” he pointed out.

“Maybe so…” she said, looking away, suddenly distracted.

A civilian in a world where none would survive, where none would ever grow out of the dirt into the sunlight. Even if Olivier trained her to perfection, to the mold of a soldier in their first year at the academy, Zinnia would never be like them, she’d never belong, and she could get caught in a spiral of danger nobody would think of protecting her from because every piece of the gears on Briggs had already learned to protect themselves first.

“She won’t follow you. Not like the rest of us. There’s not a reason why she would.”

And he was right about that. Zinnia had no duty to uphold. If she followed, she would be doing it out of something external to loyalty. She would be doing it as a civilian, indeed. But Olivier had no use for another soldier, especially one without proper training.

“I don’t need her to,” she said.

“Then what do you need from her?”

Olivier didn’t—couldn’t—answer. Perhaps she still didn’t know herself. 

* * *

 

The cycle of change began the only way it could, with Zinnia pressed face-first onto the wooden floor, tense like the day Anthony had called to tell her that her father needed help and was adamant on not asking for it.

Dawn hadn’t broken yet. As soon as it did, she would be expected to rise at once, march down to have breakfast with this one woman who fucked with her brain more than it should be permitted—and in many more different ways, too—and then surround herself with weapons and the like. None of them would be knives, she thought. Only one person in this fort, aside from Buccaneer and his automail, was allowed to carry anything that wasn’t a handgun, and that was Olivier.

Always her. Even in that sense she had to stand out. Couldn’t she just… shave that Rapunzel-like mane of hair, get a few scars, and acquire a gun? Did she have to carry that sword everywhere? Did she, really? Who would she use it against?

Zinnia wondered about this as if she didn’t know already that the thought of walking around unarmed probably hadn’t even occurred to Olivier. If it ever did, she’d consider it self-treason.

_If a horde of Drachman infiltrate Briggs, a sword couldn’t really do much against them,_ she thought often. Funnily enough, with time Zinnia had understood that everybody but the general would have possibilities of escaping, because the enemy would come straight for her. She was more notorious on foreign northern lands than she’d become in the whole of Amestris. And Drachma was likely to want her dead.

Zinnia shifted on the floor. She was slowly getting used to watching her as she slept, early in the morning when Zinnia herself wasn’t entirely awake.

She didn’t need to ask around about why Olivier would be wanted dead, rather than dead _or_ alive. If they kept Olivier’s heart beating, she would find a way to make it hellish for her captors. And she would find a way back here to plot her revenge.

It was cost-effective, in the end, to kill her, bring her back as a trophy. It would very much constitute the same victory as marching on Amestris and meeting no resistance. If Olivier fell, the north did too. It would make advancing much easier for Drachma.

No weapon could truly defend Olivier from that, should it ever come to happen… but would it hurt to leave the sword behind in favor of something that allowed to attack from a distance?

Zinnia smiled. Yeah, subtleties weren’t this woman’s strong suit. Her reputation preceded her, even now. Even in hypothetical death.

Dawn broke, catching her in the whirlpool of such thoughts. Then, reality bathed over her. Time to get up, time to embrace the silence and the professionalism of today.

Yet she didn’t. Not yet.

Those final moments, right before letting the day drag you out of bed, are the most precious, the ones you cling to the hardest because letting them go means it really is over.

Her eyes found the closed eyelids of the general. Olivier’s face changed so much when she slept, it was like having a mirror that showed you to the past without ever allowing you to change it. Zinnia was used to the marring frown and the scowls, she was used to the yelling and the obvious displays of authority. Whenever she caught a glimpse of anything that forked away from that path, she couldn’t help but stare in disbelief. In disbelief… only at first. Other emotions would take over, little by little, as she paid attention to the details of Olivier’s seeping silhouette.

Her relaxed eyebrows, limbs akimbo on the mattress, her humanity peeking past everything else for some seconds, and … her hair. Tangled and messy and shining in the morning light.

_She has really nice hair,_ Zinnia thought feebly. _Pity she uses it as a shield._

Was there anything in that woman that wasn’t used as a sort of shield, a way to hide things that didn’t belong in this scenario she’d chosen to live in?

She didn’t have much more time to distract herself from the imminent thought of morning: Olivier moved on her bed, awake at last.

Zinnia closed her eyes at once, pressing them shut. She wasn’t sure she’d been caught staring. But she didn’t want to know either.

She held her breath for some seconds, then dared take a peek out of one semi-open eye.

Why wasn’t Olivier waking her up? Poking her with the end of her foot? She was just… sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her sleep the same way Zinnia had watched her barely some seconds ago.

Zinnia closed her eyes again.

She heard Olivier sigh, so tiny a sigh it barely echoed off the walls of the room.

“Come on,” her voice said. “It’s morning already. We have work to do.”

_We…_ Yeah, they did.

Today was training day.

Breakfast went by as usual. A few greetings here and there, someone being much too loud for the hour, and people coming back from watch or patrol crossing the kitchens quite ready to go to bed that very second.

After, they both took the lifts to almost the top of the wall. It was … warm here, contrary to what Zinnia had thought it would be, being so close to the literal hellfire of the snow against the wind. _The top of the wall… I remember a promise, about taking me all the way up in the winter._

_Is this winter?_ Zinnia thought, stealing an emotional glance at Olivier’s direction. _Or this is still fall to you?_

She had never been here before. Around, yes, cleaning. But never actually through the door. There were no signs in the doors of Fort Briggs to at least warn you of what you might be walking into. All doors looked the same, and every one you opened could lead to a surprise.

“What is this place? Some sort of a gymnasium?”

Olivier looked at her like she’d just said something very stupid.

“This is where we’d train our trainees.” She smirked. “If we had any.”

Zinnia gulped. _She_ was the trainee now, wasn’t she? The sole one for miles and miles, all the way down to North City and their command center there. There should be some more there, soldiers who weren’t so yet but aimed to be.

“So what do you use it for, then?”

Olivier shrugged.

“Practice. Blowing off steam.”

Zinnia nodded to herself. It certainly explained a lot about the demeanor of Briggs men, if they had this place to unleash their hesitation and doubts, aside from actually keeping their bodies in check.

“And now I suppose it’s perfect for you to, uh, militarize me.”

Olivier laughed bitterly at that. She, too, must have found the thought of that abhorrent.

“I don’t have the time for that, I’m afraid. But you’ll learn some things while we’re here.”

Every day, for an hour or so. The old hour they’d spent in the square at Iver, avoiding each other’s eyes the same way they were actively looking to make eye contact. A duplicity more proper of a romance novel than the brief history they’d been part of so far.

“I’m your little project. I’m sure you’d find the time.”

Olivier frowned.

“If you want to join the military, this is not the right place to express that desire.”       

Zinnia shook her head. Her bangs moved with it, momentarily shielding her eyes.

“I don’t want to,” Zinnia said, “you don’t have to worry about that. Just show me what to do. I’ll make myself useful.”

“Right,” Olivier said, more to herself than anything else. _That’s what we’re here for, making you useful, yeah…_

First, Zinnia learned names and parts and how to put the two of them together. As she’d anticipated, there was no mention of knives or daggers or anything sharp. Just guns, grenades, nets. Surprisingly, a harpoon.

Olivier laughed when Zinnia pointed it out.

“Oh, we keep those here because there’s nowhere else to, but they’re not used as weapons.”

She told Zinnia about how there was a time they would walk for a couple of days to a little lagoon there was in the heart of the mountain range and come back, their shoulders invisible under bags of freshly captured fish, big enough to feed a man for a week.

Once, she told her, someone had dared the rest to swim in, not just stay at the shore. Olivier had been the first to dive into the blue waters amidst the fish and algae. She’d been young, she’d been full of energy that needed to go somewhere other than missing old bits of her life, and above all she’d been reckless. Not that she mentioned that to Zinnia.

Zinnia listened, as she familiarized herself with new concepts about guns, and for a moment she imagined that lagoon as a mythical component of a fairy tale story. A mermaid with golden hair and diamond eyes would inhabit the deepest parts of the water, and she would only come out to snitch the harpoons from the hands of the soldiers, luring them in.

Zinnia would have liked to be one of those men. She had no doubts she would not drown, but grow a tail of her own and slit gills at either side of her neck, and breathe sweet water for the rest of her life, playing with the cute little men from the mountain at a game neither could win.

It took her a minute, as Olivier urged her on to try a handgun, to realize where this particular daydream was coming from. She wanted no woman with a scaled tail and a twisted interest in those fishermen, but she did want _a_ woman.

A woman who emerged from the lake water, the little droplets sticking to the surface of her pale skin, leaning her arms on the waves as if they were solid. She had no teal tail to hide in the darkness, but two strong legs that kept her afloat.

“You ever shoot a gun before?” Olivier asked, still frowning.

A woman as human as Zinnia was herself, yet her humanity wasn’t perceptible at a first or even second glance. It needed to be dug out, it needed to be unburied from all the layers of ‘I must’ that coated her, like gold. She shone, too, under the sunlight—like gold.

“Not a big fan of guns, if that answers the question.”

A woman whose voice caught you right in, every note of its music a thread that interweaved itself with the following one. Once you’d been surrounded by them, the net fell on top of your head. And you no longer even knew how hard you’d meant to escape it. Now, you didn’t want for anything else but to stay.

“It does,” Olivier said, inspecting her closely. They were standing a few feet apart, Zinnia sitting at a bench, looking at blueprints of weapons. Olivier stood at the weaponry station of the room. “Come here,” she ordered. “You’re about to.” 

* * *

 

The second time Zinnia had had to swallow her pride and march to the department were Buccaneer worked had been even harder than the first, because that time Buccaneer had had someone else to direct his frustration at. Now, after he’d returned, tail between his legs, from Olivier’s office, Zinnia was alone against the automail arm and the little black eyes that could perfectly well cut through stone.

He promptly sat down on a huge chair that creaked under the size of him and didn’t acknowledge her after a few minutes of sulking in silence.

“You’re going to like this less than me,” he told her. “I will make a mission of it.”

But he kicked a stool her way, regardless. Olivier might be behaving like a stubborn bull, yet he trusted she had good reasons, deep inside, other than messing with him. The retirement he could accept, because it was law, after all. But this? He didn’t have the slightest clue what to do about this except follow blindly, do as she said, and hope to understand it one day. He’d probably be in his retirement home already by the time he did, though.

“I’m not as bad at this as I may seem,” Zinnia warned him. She had taken a look at the maps and the lists and the geography of the mountain range, and her heart had fluttered happily. Finding ways among mountain peaks and rivers and lakes would be a piece of cake. She could almost hear her dad; she could call him or write to him, and he would laugh even in words when he contacted her back.

“You’re a city girl,” Buccaneer commented. “All you’ve ever needed to do before was follow the streets and they would always take you somewhere familiar. This—” He chuckled loudly. “—is no city.”

She dragged the stool closer to the table. Even then, she had to lean forward a little to reach it.

“Show me the current routes you’re taking, and where you’re spotting the Drachma patrols,” she cut him off, wanting to get her hands a little dirty instead of putting up with his mockery.

They called her ‘city girl’. None of them knew she had never lived in an agglomeration of people big enough to be called that.

“Oh, yeah. Wait.” He stood up loudly, stomped—loudly—all the way to a shelf and picked up a few old parchments that he brought to the table. She could tell these weren’t the ones he worked on, they were informative, clean prints. “So, these are the three main routes we’re taking. We send men randomly on one of them, then change it or not the next time.”

Zinnia peeked at the lines. The range spread miles and miles at either side of Briggs. Technically, the upper portion of North Area belonged to the range, although only the very last tip of it was referred to as such. That was where the tallest mountains could be found. Among them, a small valley had opened. In spring, a river crossed it, and near it the village of Iver had been built. Fort Briggs stood a few miles north of there, at what could have been the very heart of the valley if Drachma didn’t stand quite close to that end of it.

In the map Buccaneer was showing her, only one of the routes remained on pure Amestrian soil, slithering up and down the mountains around the fort like patrols did but in a much bigger scale. The other two ventured into the no man’s land that was the Drachma-Amestris border, one forking left and the other right.

It seemed clear to Zinnia that there remained an incredibly vast area in the middle that the soldiers didn’t get to inspect.

“Are all three ever covered at once?” she asked. It made sense to have two branching routes only if both were traversed at the same time.

“…no,” Buccaneer admitted in a small voice she couldn’t believe belonged to him. He cleared his throat and tried to compose himself. “Two, at most.”

“You could… very well be letting spies in all the time and you wouldn’t know.”

The girl was speaking truth, yet obvious truth. If Drachma meant to be stealthy about it, they very well could succeed in breaching the more distant points of the border that Briggs couldn’t cover in their most ambitious dreams.

“Yeah… we used to think so too, but we have men out there all the time.” Buccaneer raised and raised his voice back to his usual levels as he became more confident in what he was saying. “These are no small incursions. They do sweep the area well enough.”

“No, seriously,” Zinnia insisted. “This is a major problem.”

Her eyes opened wide at the implications of it. The country could already be housing potentially dangerous population. Iver could very well be a nest of Drachman spies, a place where they could observe Briggs soldiers at their most relaxed. But then she took a deep breath and remembered Candie and Charlie and Lynna and Southy and the rest of the people whose names she had forgotten. Those people wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone work for a country that had been threatening them with violence for generations. Some people in that town must even remember the last war against Drachma and the poor quality of life after it.

“We caught one spy time ago,” Buccaneer added. “We had a bit of a… situation there. We think Drachma’s stepped back a little since.” He could never forget the face of the general as she’d shoved her message for the enemy into the dead spy’s mouth. He still had nightmares about such brutality from time to time.

“Do you have spies infiltrated there?” Zinnia said, taking the map from the flat surface of the table into her own hands to look at it more closely. If they sent spies, they would have to have a designated way to do it, too. And there was nothing in here that suggested that. It could always be confidential, like many things here were. But there was just so much blank space between the routes it hurt Zinnia’s eyes.

“…no,” Buccaneer replied, voice ridiculously small once more, as if he couldn’t admit to a city girl that her expectations of this place had been abysmally high.

“And you’re the tactical prowess of the Amestrian military?” She couldn’t help a tiny snort. _These are the men everyone is so scared of?_ _They haven’t been defeated by Drachma yet, not because they’re extraordinary but because Drachma hasn’t made a move_ , she realized, shaking her head. Well, perhaps calling them unextraordinary was a bit of a leap. This place was nothing but impressive, and it continued to be to her after so long of being here already.

Buccaneer just stared at her, trying not to let his mouth fall open. He’d thought this girl would cower continuously in his presence, like most did. He’d had this idea that she’d be as useless here as she’d been everywhere else. And while she certainly had no training to draw from and not an ounce of experience in the kind of job Briggs did, this kid had balls to call him out on the routes and the lack of.

And hurt as it did, he couldn’t just tell her the reason why there was no spy program. He could very well wave his arm at her and grin like a toddler, but it would probably only scare her, and if she came down running and crying to Olivier, it’d be Buccaneer who would get in trouble. It wasn’t worth it. But right now he did want to tell Zinnia that they didn’t do it because Olivier _didn’t want them to._

Ultimately, she called the shots around here. And she’d made it crystal clear that she wanted no more lives endangered if there was no need for it. Besides, they were the embodiment of defense in the Amestrian military. Defense, not attack. A defender didn’t need to carefully study the enemy’s moves in order to find an opening to strike. They waited for others to hit first, then retaliated. And it worked. It had always worked, ever since Briggs had had its name.

Why would they name this fort after the mountain range where it stood if not because the men in it had never failed to defend it? And by that logic, soon enough it would be called Fort Armstrong for the same reasons. Buccaneer hoped he would live to see that day, he would never let Olivier live it down.

Now, he just shrugged in reply to the girl.

“The orders are clear: defend the border, don’t trespass it and don’t start a war.” He pulled a smirk almost as wide as his entire face and rubbed his automail arm with his other hand. “Nothing there about not fighting back if _they_ start it.”

Zinnia, though, was still thinking about the lines on the map and how she would fill the space if this was up to her.

“You keep the wall and its immediate surroundings secure with the perimeter patrols and the watches atop of it, right?” she said. Buccaneer nodded. “Alright, then… Perhaps there’s been no new activity because you haven’t been in the right routes to see it.”

Buccaneer frowned at her pensive face.

“Are you suggesting to draw new routes? Hell, we barely have about enough men here to pull off what we’re _already_ working on. New routes aren’t viable.”

She sighed and put the map back where she’d picked it up, then she shrugged.

“You’d at least have the element of surprise, and you’d cover more ground, too. You could connect it to already-existing routes, have the men regroup, too.” Buccaneer was looking at her wide-eyed, so she continued a little more, letting the ideas out as they came. “Even cut short the trips home, take a shortcut. That way you’d send batches more often, the men would be more refreshed, and in case of a skirmish you have thrice the man power out there to fight.”

Buccaneer thought about it. It made sense, in case they had problems at the border again. A shortcut common to all routes meant all different batches would have it easier to regroup, yes, and even send a messenger in an emergency.

He rubbed at the back of his neck with his metal arm. It made clinking noises when he moved it slowly.

“I…uh… I’m going to need to think about this,” he said. “Can’t do anything without approval, though. But I’ll make sure to put it forward, and of course forget about getting any credit for it. And then again…” He seemed to be doing as she had, just thinking out loud. “We still would need more men to put it into practice.” He gave a short sigh, leaning his elbow on the table, and looked at her. “Uh, thanks, though. Your feedback is appreciated.”

She nodded in return, as if to mean it’d been no problem and she expected no retribution for it. She wasn’t military, she knew the basics of how this place worked, little else. She was content with her shared bed, a warm place to stay in, and a few meals a day.

“I’m moving on to budgets now, if you—uh—wanna take a look too, there’s not a lot else to do around here till the batches return.”

And so they worked on that. And on those hypothetical new routes. And on ways to pack lighter for the expeditions. And on how to teach Zinnia the proper abbreviators and lingo and the headers of the documents.

With time, Buccaneer found himself no longer looking at Zinnia the way he had at first. It was evident to him in many ways how she was a civilian and had no interest in changing that. She was so small sometimes he forgot she was there and she spoke far more than he was used to as they worked, but the girl had a head firmly set between her shoulders—if a little imaginative a times, too—and there certainly was something inside that head that could be put to use in his department.

After a few weeks, he would have tipped his hat to Olivier if he’d worn one. _Well played, boss_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who are curious, I debated for days whether or not to include the word 'gymnasium' in this. It just got me thinking, since it's from Greek origin, whether I even _should_ use words like these in a world where we have no idea if there is even a version Greece. But, oh well... the show must go on, and this was just a word in a work with thousands.  
>  For the longest time, too, I had this self-indulgent headcanon that Drachma was modeled after our Greece (rather than Russia) because of its name and I spent a long time just listening to Greek music and doing a bit of research on the culture, but in the end it was too far-fetched an idea to actually include XD
> 
> also, see those teeny tiny mermaid references? keep them in mind, they're going to gain relevance very soon ^^


	23. Teal and gold

On that first day at the gymnasium, Zinnia had taken a step forward towards Olivier, whose arm remained in the air offering her a weapon to take.

“It doesn’t actually shoot bullets unless you pull the trigger,” Olivier had said, obviously amused at Zinnia’s reticence.

“Don’t wanna do _that_ now.”

“Yes, you do. I can’t have you out there without knowing how to.”

“It’s not like I will need to, anyway. If something happens, I’ll just run.”

Olivier had then proceeded to take the girl’s hand and press the gun into it, in apparent carelessness molded her hand to the crevices of the weapon, then squeezing it so Zinnia would understand just how tight she needed to hold it.

“If something happens,” she’d replied, “it’ll be your job to stand your ground just like everybody else.”

“Just… how badly do you need the manpower?”

Olivier had crossed her arms. “Badly enough.” _Badly enough to make me wish this was just about manpower._

Shutting everybody else was more important. Shutting herself up was more important.

Zinnia had just stood there, in front of the target, trying not to immediately let go of the cold surface of the gun. It weighed against the strength of her arm. She was used to much lighter attack weapons, if any at all. The kind that she could work with in the distance after years of aiming at flour bags or up close, stealthy and quick. She had needed those skills time ago to survive alone in the barren lands this place had turned into.

“Alright,” Olivier had said. “Stand as you normally would, arms extended.”

Zinnia had done as she’d been told. Olivier had been right behind her, inspecting her stance as if the whole point of this was just to hang here somewhere and look at her until she dissolved from erosion. But she couldn’t deny there was something… else. A feeling that had had little to do with the session.

Olivier had studied the angles, the overall position. There was no doubt at all to her that Zinnia had never touched a weapon, and that she didn’t exactly feel content and peaceful when confronted with the fact that she would now have to.

She could get in trouble for this. The military doctrine was passed down the official way, Zinnia had a thousand recruitment places she could go to if she wanted to further any training. Yet here they were, a woman and a soldier—a civilian and a general—, in the same room for a forbidden purpose that would really benefit none of them.

Olivier had leaned closer to her. She’d hesitated for a brief moment before she cupped Zinnia’s elbows to correct her posture and the angle of forearm and shoulder.

“Put your left hand under your right,” Olivier had said, then. Her voice hadn’t echoed right in Zinnia’s ears on account that Olivier was far too tall for that, but that made it even worse, because it echoed _around_ her, like someone had inserted it right into her brain as a second entity this body of hers would host.

_Am I the soldier,_ Zinnia had wondered, _or am I the woman?_

Slowly, Olivier’s hands had receded all the way to Zinnia’s shoulders, which made them tense up so abruptly they both would’ve thought a bullet had been propelled out of the gun, alright.

She had tightened her grip over them slightly. For the moment, they would focus on this.

“Relax them,” Olivier had said. And Zinnia had. On command, like one of those dolls that squealed if you squeezed them in the right places. She could feel the general behind her— _right_ behind her—hovering over her, towering over her in all that blue. Zinnia had been wearing the same shade of blue for a long time now, yet it was never _her_ blue or Briggs soldiers’ blue. That blue had a name and a reputation. “Now,” she had continued, “you can either stand like that or move a foot up until you’re comfortable in your own weight.”

“Is anyone ever?” Zinnia had muttered to herself.

“Ever what?”

“Comfortable in their own weight.”

“Eventually, when it’s time to use it against someone else,” Olivier had replied at once. Her hands had moved to Zinnia’s hips, as professionally as she could. They didn’t linger and they didn’t try to cover more ground than they could. But Olivier’s throat had grown drier in a second. “Lean forward, now.”

Zinnia had.

“Less,” Olivier had said. Now, she had positively locked her hands to Zinnia’s hips. Professionally. To correct a posture. Never because she wanted to. She’d never wanted to put her hands on another human being _that_ way since… that day in the station. And she hadn’t been all hands that day, she’d been all goodbyes. Would she ever learn to do it again, to touch without invading, to exist as a person instead of as an icon?

Zinnia had licked her lips.

“How much is less?”

“I don’t know. Just do it.”

She had moved back to her original position.

“Like this?”

Olivier had almost laughed. “No.”

“Then how?” Zinnia had asked, trying to sound calm because she hadn’t been ready to appear as a terrified deer that day.

Olivier, though, had had a horse’s heart beating in her chest, galloping away into lands where her head had no control over it whatsoever.

“You need to stand so that the recoil won’t kick you off balance.” Then, she had shaken her head. Locks of blonde hair brushed against the back of Zinnia’s neck. “This is trial and error. Assume position.”

Zinnia had. And this time Olivier had laughed, without thinking too much about how hypocritical that made her.

“I suppose it’s wrong again?”

“So wrong…”

“Alright. I can take that.”

“Would it be alright if I…” Olivier had begun saying. In her mind, this scene was happening so very differently: she was the voice of reason, logic, and coolness, the catalyst of how this would turn out, and Zinnia needed her to be a rock, so she would be a rock. From the outside of Olivier Armstrong’s mind, though, all that transpired was the visual representation of a held-in breath and the brief span of time of inner debate before one chose to exhale at last. There existed no reason or logic or coolness, just two women and a target. “… if I guided you?”

Zinnia’s eyes had opened wide.

“G-guide me?”

“Yes.”

Zinnia had thought about it. It sounded… like a bigger deal than it would probably be. Olivier would just pretty much give her detailed and mostly incomprehensible directions until Zinnia’s body was a perfect shooting stance, and however long that took it couldn’t be any worse than what Zinnia’s brain was playing on a loop for her to cower at.

“Allow me, then,” Olivier had almost muttered. Zinnia’s entire neck prickled with goosebumps. And the infection spread all the way to her clavicles, her arms, her stomach. It all had begun to shiver out of her control.

Then, to prove her wrong—to prove how standing here today was nothing but admitting defeat to herself—, Olivier’s hands _moved_ on her to _move_ her.

Zinnia had made no sound, not because she wasn’t dying to, but because she couldn’t.

These hands weren’t hands she knew. Other hands, she’d learned to anticipate how they would move on her, what they would ask of her, what they would freely give her. These hands and the motion they carried were slow—desperately slow—and tentative regarding their trajectory, although firm on their purpose there.

It felt magical how a body could be molded sometimes by exterior forces who didn’t know it.

At last, after attaining what they’d done this for, Olivier’s hands had moved away.

“Aim and shoot,” she’d said, her voice strangely distant. What Zinnia hadn’t been able to tap into was that Olivier’s heart had ceased to be a horse’s in this moment, now it was a hummingbird’s, all speed.

Following orders, Zinnia had aimed and shot.

_Once upon a time, a general and a civilian had consorted. The general had been quiet, afraid her words would let it slip that she felt more woman than weapon, and the civilian had let the scant words the general had said become the sole reason of her existence. Because when a general orders, you follow. And you follow because you believe._

That first bullet had barely grazed the target, but Olivier had smiled nonetheless. 

* * *

 

Every day after training, she joined Buccaneer many stories down. Work wasn’t exactly abundant, but when she came back again he had at least considered her ideas, and didn’t exactly dismiss them, although it became clear to Zinnia how he still had received no approval to put them to practice.

Her arms hurt from holding the gun, as she’d been doing for some sessions now. She still hadn’t managed to hit the target exactly where she wanted to, but at least she no longer had trouble standing and more or less could adopt the right posture without needing Olivier to… teach her—show her—how to stand again.

“Hypothetically speaking, if we were to draw a new route,” Buccaneer said that morning when Zinnia walked in, hair slightly ruffled after showering. She always came out of the gymnasium especially shaky and with her sweat glands teasing her, and therefore never hesitated about taking a quick shower before work. “Where would you draw it?”

She moved her stool closer to his, elbows both on the table, and picked the pencil that Buccaneer wasn’t currently using. The general chaos he was used to working in was… amusing, to some extent. He knew where things were and didn’t think twice before reaching into the mess and getting what he’d been looking for. But she still had trouble understanding the logic behind it all. At least the shelf was better organized.

She focused on the map, the same one he had gotten out the last time for her to commentate on.

“Alright, then…”

How much territory wasn’t Briggs covering? How much _could_ they, with this new idea? She bopped the pencil on the surface of the map. So much of this was unexplored. So much of this could be Drachma’s training ground. Not that she had much experience with fending off an entire country, but it made sense to ensure they were being kept from the border, or from crossing it, at least.

Then, finally, she drew a slapdash triangle between the other three routes.

Buccaneer hummed but didn’t say anything yet. Did he expect her to explain first?

She cleared her throat and explained anyway.

“As previously discussed, meeting points with other routes: check.” She drew a line separating the triangle in two twin smaller triangles, then each of those into other two. “Quick retreat route: check. Covered ground? Vastly more.” She shaded the little triangles, her trace slightly less intense now. “Eventually, you would also have eyes on these regions, and you’d control one half of the total territory you’re… fighting over.”

“Defendin’,” Buccaneer corrected her. “Total territory we’re _defending_ , city girl.”

“It’s risky,” she said, ignoring him, “and you would probably need a _lot_ of manpower. But if you ever do come by the numbers, trying it out won’t hurt.” Zinnia sighed, leaning her chin onto her hand. “One day you could go with more routes, cover the entire border.”

“It’s not a bad _dream_ , no.”  Buccaneer sighed. He probably did want to do this. If only because, owing to the shortage of men to put it practice, he would be needed out there and he’d see the ghosts of war again. The ghosts that for now roamed lonely in the snow, awaiting his return. “Not plausible right now, but not bad either. Show me more alternatives.”

“Ones we can actually develop or ones to dream about?”

“Practical ones.” He laughed, and she had the impression that deep down he was laughing at more than just her or this idea. “I can’t come to the general with a triangle that’s half as wide as the border.”

Zinnia sighed and got back to work. He wanted practical, huh?

“You could keep drawing lines upwards to make a sort of wheel. No detours, a respectable amount away from other routes, in case you needed help or anything.” She shrugged. “Or horizontal lines. Turn it into a net of sorts.”

“Yeah, kid, the problem is, which? And exactly from where to where it goes?” he said, finding her innocence endearing. She had come in here, thinking herself close to the heart of the fort, but she’d only uncovered the most superficial pars of it. The truth of Briggs was still hers to someday be acquainted with. “It’s not just drawing lines on a map. If you want this to move forward, we need to actually give her something solid.”

To no one’s surprise, Zinnia didn’t need that ‘her’ broken down into something more specific. There were only two women in this fort, they slept in the same room, and she was one of them.

_A few feet apart, but definitely in the same room,_ she reminded herself.

She shrugged again, pushing the map away, and smiled. “I’m not the one in charge. That’s not really up to me, is it?”

Buccaneer blushed.

“No, but since you’re here, let’s pretend we’re both in charge.”

She laughed at him this time. “I thought this was no place for a city girl?”

“Act like you’re not and we’ll get along,” he grumbled, but he finished it off with a smile and Zinnia breathed easy.

She knew this man had been—was—against her staying in the fort, working their same hours at jobs she sucked at. It was a relief that he hadn’t immediately shunned her in his own work place. It was a relief he didn’t seem to remember all that hate he’d been spreading not that long ago. And yet, still, something wasn’t quite right. She had no idea what it could have been.

In her mind, she was still a sailor crossing a lagoon to find a mermaid, but the mermaid never stopped hiding and the only times she showed herself it was briefly, a hand breaching the surface of the water over which Zinnia’s boat floated.

In her mind, the rest of the uniformed men at the shore called her names for having boarded that boat and for carrying no fishing rod. And she hadn’t because she didn’t want a meal, she wanted a home.

A home in the heart of a mermaid. A home that hid behind layers of lies, a home in the truth. A home that bore no name yet had a soul.

_Once upon a time,_ Zinnia would write later, when Buccaneer went to get the both of them a cup of coffee that she probably wouldn’t drink anyway, _a mermaid swam and waited under the only waters in the kingdom that still held life. The winter froze other lakes and rivers, but never this one, and so men all over the region walked and rode to the little lagoon amongst mountains, seeking to fill their stomachs and satchels with its fish. The mermaid lured them in, so they would never come to her sacred home anew and steal her only company; their bones became her bed, their empty skulls her loneliness. Yet the men never looked to capture or incapacitate her. They let her roam the waters they fished in, hoping to maybe fish her out one day, too, and that she would grow legs and lungs and could walk among them. A new mouth to feed, yet a mouth who would be able to share with them the intricacies of catching fish._

_Once upon a time, I walked and rode because I, too, was hungry. I, too, saw this mermaid. And her beauty and mystery eclipsed my hunger, so I bared my feet and bared my soul and walked into the little lagoon, for I wanted that mermaid’s voice to show me the way, to either do me in after making me wait to see her or give me what I needed in order to not go hungry anymore. Her acceptance would be my home, if she ever chose to offer it. And the men would cheer, the men would lay a rock by the shore with my name written on it. «Here lies the heart of Zinnia Erwin, here she found her home—here, we gave her a home.»_

Zinnia wrinkled the piece of paper with her words on it after writing that last word. She needed to start living with both feet on the ground.

Planks of wood as her ground, golden hair as her morning sun. 

* * *

 

Once Zinnia had been able to shoot a gun without either freaking out or hitting herself in the face with her own elbows and/or falling to the floor, they’d moved to shooting at targets for a while, and then a new skill was at hand.

One that Zinnia wasn’t entirely new to.

She’d lived for twenty-four years in a town that, very much like Iver, sustained itself on gossip and little else. What was she supposed to do in her free time except listen to her dad and learn new things?

When she’d been in her early teens, she’d been surrounded by knifes most of her life already and her father had made sure she knew how to fear them and use them in equal measure, just in case. Amestris was at war with many, if not all, of their neighboring countries, and the Central Area was the same distance away from any of them. He had signed her up for a class the soldiers had been giving on personal defense, to complement that which she already knew. At least that would ensure his little girl had more choices than just trying to run away and being captured anyway. Theirs were trying times.

So Zinnia had learned then the basics of fighting, and for the first time she’d been introduced to the discipline of exercise and the benefits it brought. Her routine wasn’t intense or special, but it kept her in shape.

And now, although she’d been more or less discarding it for months, all that knowledge in the back of her head kicked in when Olivier brought her in that day with the promise of hand-to-hand combat.

One look at the general’s arms and Zinnia had known Olivier was no newbie to this. They absolutely had to cover that in the academy. Take the weapons away from a soldier and the base of their survival lies on their own fists. And Olivier and her men were all about survival, and not everybody’s, precisely. _Survival of the fittest for the real men of the north._

“We’re starting with foundation here, too,” Olivier said.

“No need. I have a little bit of experience.”

Olivier quirked an eyebrow up.

“How much is ‘a little bit’?” She very much doubted this girl had been thoroughly trained in anything, but… she could also be downplaying her own aptitudes. God knew Olivier would have, in order to win an upcoming fight.

Zinnia actually smiled.

“Enough for us to skip the basics and for you to whoop me back into shape.”

“Is that so?” Olivier said, tempted to return that smile. So she had ‘experience’… _Enough_ experience. Olivier had graduated early, she had fought men who at the time thought their being bigger than her meant they’d already won, and she’d carried their country to sign an armistice with an army at her back that back then would have fought her for her title. Whatever Zinnia considered ‘enough experience’, Olivier didn’t share that opinion. “Well, then…”

And then Olivier assumed her position at once.

“Just one thing,” Zinnia said, lifting one finger and very much already sweating nervously. “Is it even possible to fight wearing this?”

‘This’ meaning the blue uniform and its rigidity.

“Take it off if you want to,” Olivier said. The amount of shame that coursed through her spine right that second could not be measured. _Quick, rectify at once._ Zinnia was looking at her just as puzzled. “Take _the jacket_ off, if you want. I’ll fight like this.”

“So it _is_ possible.”

Olivier took one deep breath that she let out slowly, so Zinnia couldn’t notice how necessary it had been to take it.

“Out there,” Olivier said, “no one will be courteous with you, and nobody will stop wielding a sword at you because you can’t fight in whatever clothes you’re wearing.”

She had a point, yet all Zinnia could picture in her mind was Olivier herself raising a sword at her in slow motion. Zinnia wouldn’t be able to stop that blow from coming, regardless of what clothes she had on her.

Now, though, she smirked a little bit, undoing the buttons of her jacket to reveal a black undershirt that she’d have no trouble working out in.

“Is this you being courteous with me, General?”

To her surprise—and to her own, to be honest—, Olivier smirked back.

“Courteous isn’t the same as polite.”

“Yet both would get me killed in a battlefield.”

“And here, too,” Olivier said, before her smirk turned into a grimace of pure concentration as she moved with enviable speed to knock Zinnia off her feet in record time.

The thud of her back against the cold concrete hurt Olivier’s ears—and heart—but she just smoothed the fabric of her own uniform and looked down at Zinnia, who was lying on the floor as if she’d never been thrown off her feet like this before. And she had many times, years ago, in order learn how to stand and how to move her feet without screwing up her balance.

“I take it back,” Zinnia breathed. “I _don’t_ have any experience. Shit…”

Olivier offered her a hand to help her up again.

“Actually,” she said, “that would have hurt you much more if you didn’t.” Zinnia wrapped her fingers around Olivier’s hand. “Nice stance you got there.”

_That means…_ Zinnia thought as she stood up, _that she’s much stronger than she looks._

And Olivier, living up to the last part of her surname, did look respectably strong already.

They locked eyes as they moved their hands away. A soldier and a civilian, the soldier trying to give the civilian an insight—a mere glimpse—into her world in order to keep her safe, the civilian being ready to learn and lose and get swept off the ground if that meant she could look the soldier in the eyes when it mattered and see the truth in her for herself.

_If her eyes held the secrets to this war she’s playing at,_ Zinnia thought, _would she be wasting her time fighting me?_

What she didn’t know was that Olivier Armstrong’s eyes had seen nothing but war since she had been born into this world, and that she planned to never see anything but.

_If her eyes showed me the way out of here,_ Olivier wondered, _would I take it?_

“Again,” she told Zinnia. “Try to anticipate to me this time.”

In a way, hadn’t Olivier already taken that route long ago, letting the girl in here and making sure she wouldn’t be a target out in the field?

_If her eyes could give me answers,_ they both thought to themselves, feet firmly planted on the concrete, _would I dare ask the questions that plague me?_

Zinnia’s back hit the ground many times that morning. Each time it did was a shot she’d missed another morning, each time was a thought she hadn’t voiced. But she took each and every one gladly. She lasted longer, too, before Olivier’s full power hit her in the chest and sent her flying—not just literally.

Her back hit the ground, yes, but it was Olivier’s hand that brought her back up, her voice that invited her to try again, to try because one of these times she might stop her in time.

When Zinnia did, her black undershirt wet from sweat, none of them had expected her. They almost fell to the floor when Zinnia’s forearm had stopped Olivier’s attack in time, because Zinnia immediately tried to take a step back and get away. In doing so, she tripped over her own feet.

Olivier wasted no time in wrapping her hand around Zinnia’s forearm and tug so the girl wouldn’t fall. Her own hair was plastered around her temples from the day’s exertion, but she held on tightly.

“Thanks,” Zinnia meeked out.

“It’s not fun if you fall on your own.”

“Isn’t it?” Zinnia laughed.

Olivier immediately moved to make this ‘fun’, as quickly as impassively as the first time, and the result was the same.

“Hey…” Zinnia complained from the floor, again. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

Olivier laughed too, “I know.”

But she reached out again so Zinnia would stand back up and they could leave already, since in their enthusiasm it had become later than usual. Buccaneer would already be waiting for his new assistant.

Confidently now, Zinnia held the hand, but she didn’t take it. She grabbed Olivier by the wrist and brought her to the concrete floor with her.

Olivier looked as if it had started to rain purple.

Zinnia, on the contrary, began to giggle.

“I can’t believe you fell for that.”

Olivier had hair in her mouth, so she pushed it away and then tried to regain both her composure and her cool-mindedness. _What in the hell did just happen?_ She didn’t get to her feet yet, though; the flower girl wasn’t.

“Oldest trick in the book…” Zinnia continued, still laughing, though now gently.

_You’ve… caught me by surprise, not a lot of people can do that. And even if they can, I always outsmart them long before they can act. And yet… you’ve defeated me as a joke._

Olivier sighed. _And as more than just a joke._

“Are we going to stay down here for the rest of the day?” she asked.

“It’s not so bad down here.”

“That’s not you talking, that’s the part of you that’s grown used to sleeping on wood.”

Zinnia began laughing. Without any thought on appearing normal and not idiotic. She sounded like a teenager, and she loved it.

Olivier couldn’t believe her ears. Laughter… and not as response to Buccaneer’s loudness or as a defense mechanism. Real laughter. In her fort? In her gymnasium? Because of something she’d said?

This could almost be a… an inside joke of sorts. If anyone else were hearing right now, they wouldn’t even understand one bit of what was happening.

Her heart picked up on the cues and began distributing a pulsing harmonic feeling all over her body, bright like the sun in the sky that filtered through the clouds.

“Still,” Zinnia said once her belly hurt from chuckling, rolling onto her side to look at Olivier in the eye, “it’s nice right now.”

Olivier found herself returning this eye contact, born out of something so simple yet almost exquisite in this place. Normally, if she stared into someone’s eyes it was to prove she would always be the last to look away and to remind them of the fact that she was above them, hierarchically anyway.

The flower girl, she discovered, had brown eyes. Brown and big and expressive, always hopeful even if they housed the tiniest bit of despair in them. _What hurt you,_ Olivier wondered, _and how do I make sure nothing does again?_ Eyes like those needed to be free from despair, they didn’t deserve anything but the warmest of glees.

She looked into Zinnia’s eyes for seconds that almost turned into minutes, and she nodded.

“It is nice,” she said.

“But we can’t stay here all day, no,” Zinnia said. “We have places to be.”

And how strange that in this very moment Olivier would have forgotten about all those places she was needed to instead just lie on her back in the floor of the training room with a girl she barely knew that had laughed at one of her jokes.

She broke eye contact first to stand up, and then Zinnia followed. Olivier didn’t help her now.

“One more round?” Zinnia said.

“I thought you’d said we had places to be…”

Olivier inspected the look on Zinnia’s face. This wasn’t a scene out of one of her daydreams while signing contracts, this was… in front of her right now. Three-dimensional and very real. The look of a woman who was more than ready to learn and lose and get swept off the ground if that meant she could look Olivier in the eyes just a little longer.

And the truth of that overwhelmed her. Her heart didn’t know now if it was time or not to get sickly saccharine or wait until later.

This one more round Zinnia was hinting at had nothing to do with the physical training of it. It had to do with whom she’d be training with.

Then, reality poured all over Olivier when she blinked. A dream, that was all it was, all it had ever been. Back in the town’s square, back in her office, back here. Nothing but an illusion her over-exhausted brain had clung to in order to stay awake, in order to fall asleep…

_But she did laugh at my joke, and those eyes… they can’t lie, not even to me._

She shook her head to drive any thought away. Any confusion she might hone over this would only make things worse. Her heart, of course, chose now to flutter excitedly. It, too, liked the idea of a joke that has an audience, and the idea of there being something behind that than just plain old sense of humor.

“I’ve some matters waiting to be tended to,” Olivier said calmly, “I’ll see you here in the morning. Try not to get your ass kicked so easily then.”

She walked away with a smirk still on her lips.

_She laughed at your joke and she wanted one more round,_ Olivier thought as her legs took her closer to the door. _Whatever that means, it means something. Unless she’s a spy. Which … she couldn’t possibly be. Any Drachman with half a mind that had been allowed this close to me would have already beheaded me in my sleep. And this woman isn’t even capable of hitting me back in combat._

Olivier grinned. Nobody could see how her lips curved, but they did, and she would remember it. That was all that mattered. She grinned and she took off her jacket in one clean motion, on her way to the showers, before she pushed the door open and got out of there.

Zinnia didn’t fix her eyes anywhere but the general’s back as she’d exited the room. Was she imagining things or had there been… something different in them today? Something less sharp and more welcoming? Something like familiarity, perhaps? Like acknowledging.

All thought she was capable of when she saw Olivier removing her blue jacket to reveal the same undershirt Zinnia wore—plus those two arms that made her surname acquire a more literal meaning and the fluidity in the muscles of her back—was: _if tomorrow is anything like right now, I would let you kick my ass to infinity and beyond._  

* * *

 

“No whistling in the workplace,” Buccaneer said for the fifteenth time this morning. For some reason he didn’t quite get to grasp, Zinnia was not complaining about anything today, or making snappy remarks, or even… being bothersome in her petite girly way that made him roll his eyes every quarter of an hour.

“Was I?”

“Yes, you were. Quit it.”

“You tap your arm against the table…” she added in a small voice.

“Yeah, well, I’m boss around here.”

She smiled stupidly.

“Is captain under general?”

Buccaneer blushed. “Shut up and get that list done.”

She was supposed to think of new things the soldiers might need on their next trip past the border, and she’d been reading old complaints from previous incursions in order to solve some of them, at least. Buccaneer was content with her work so far, but the little happy noises were beginning to slowly grate his brain.

Despite the hour, and despite the early training he knew she had before coming here, Zinnia remained chirpy today when normally she’d be frowning already and drinking all the coffee he brought her while she called it names.

He’d never met someone who directly attacked the coffee like this, and he’d been drinking it with old Central soldiers for decades. Eventually, the tongue got used to the taste. And even if the coffee was bad, it still did its job at keeping you awake.

He observed her for a couple of seconds. There really was no trace of that Zinnia today. He would have liked to know what the hell had happened to her to keep her this happy and if he could maybe get hold of it for himself. Monday mornings made him wish they were physical entities just so he could fist fight with them.

“Zinnia,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re _humming_.”

“Sorry,” she said, not looking up from the paper. “I don’t notice it when I’m doing it.”

“Well, then maybe I will hum so you see how bothersome it is.”

He did, true to his word. But his humming felt more like an instrument that’s played at full intensity while not being tuned.

She began guffawing.

“Buccaneer, I swear to god, I will ask to change jobs again!” she said, covering her ears, but she looked just as joyful, as if his terrible singing didn’t affect her.

She could’ve stood in front of the armies of hell today and not flinched at the horrendous sights before her.

He stopped, though. He knew his singing cold very well be hellish too.

“Now you see what it’s like, huh?”

She just grinned at him like he’d seen babies do when he’d been just Julian and not quite Captain Buccaneer. Babies smiled with their whole face, and you didn’t have to doubt their intentions, you just instantly felt their love for you when they did. He stared at Zinnia’s grin, trying to remember the last time he’d seen a baby. Trans men at Briggs were not an exception and there had been established couples in the fort for years, yet Buccaneer had a bit of an idea as to why none had chosen to have an infant or to adopt one. Drachma, mostly. Drachma and the work itself. It would be crazy to raise a child in this environment. Although, he thought, perhaps it might cheer up the place. He for one would love a baby to play with.

“What on earth is wrong with you this morning?” he told her. “You’re everywhere but here, kid.”

She didn’t stop smiling, but she did shake her head a little, trying to get back to the ground from her little cloud. A cloud of the memory of those hands on her body, that hand touching her own, and those eyes. Blue, the warmest of blues, even beneath all that ice.

“Oh, you know… nothing much.”

“Yeah, right, take it somewhere else, then,” Buccaneer grumbled.

They worked in relative silence for a while after that. She kept making excited little noises from time to time, as if she were trying to repress laughter, but he knew by now that whatever thing she found cute wasn’t around here but in her thick head. So he just shook his head when he heard her go, and tried to focus on the work. Ever since he was at the kitchens for the other half of the day, he found it harder to concentrate on this. Plus, he smelled like food all day long, it made him hungry.

“Well,” he said in the end, “I think this is decent enough.”

“Hm?”

“The new route.”

Zinnia stared at him.

“I’m taking it up to Olivier to get it approved.”

Zinnia made another one of her noises and blushed.

“Will she approve of it?” she asked, though, as if nothing was happening. And if Buccaneer was to trust her word, nothing was.

“That’s what I’m gonna find out, kid,” he told her, and stood up, picking his map and her list and rolling them up to carry under his left arm.

She pushed her stool away from the table and got on her feet as well.

“Where’d you think you’re going?”

“To… the general’s office?”

Buccaneer chuckled loudly.

“And why do you think I’d let you come with me?”

“Because—”

“No ‘because’. If I let you tag along, you’ll ruin it. Stay here. I’ll be back in a while.”

She sat back down on her stool, trying to look wounded at his negative.

“And if I hear you humming when I’m back, I swear I will…”

She didn’t get to hear the rest of it, though. Buccaneer was out of the door as fast as he could. They’d worked on this project long enough, and this time he’d had another brain on it, not just his. Olivier couldn’t just shut it down saying it was all Buccaneer’s way of getting back at the universe for his arm or whatever else he’d lost in the last war. This time, he thought, she’d have to listen.

And she… did. Olivier listened, took a few notes, even took a look at his and Zinnia’s designs, as well as the budget list and the improvement on previous trips. She didn’t attack him once. Once!

Buccaneer pretended not to notice and just let his natural charisma carry him through the brief minute he spent defending his idea. But it was evident, nonetheless, that Olivier wasn’t herself this morning. and Buccaneer was familiar with that, because he’d just left a daydreaming girl that shared that trait with her.

_You have got to be kidding me,_ he thought. _She chooses today of all days to be lenient, huh? I wonder why._

But he couldn’t speak against it. So far, it looked like this strange and shared mood of his boss might get her to give the new route the green light. Her entire face had been… stretched up, like a smile but a permanent one. Even her eyes seemed lively.

In the end, she archived the files Buccaneer had brought, _thanked him for his time,_ and concluded that even though they certainly couldn’t afford to open a new route right now, she would be looking into it because she thought it necessary.

Julian Buccaneer left Olivier’s office, spirits high, and tried to high-five with his automail arm every single newbie he ran into, booming with laughter.

Today just had to be a good day. It must have dawned that way. Nothing else could explain _Olivier,_ of all people, being normal for one morning.

Or so he thought, up until he opened the door back to his little cave in the heart of the fort, and found Zinnia scribbling on his table, giving off the same soft vibes as before that maybe he would allow to affect him as well now.

“What’d she say?” Zinnia asked, never taking her eyes from whatever words she was writing.

Buccaneer remembered Miles telling him he’d suspected this might be the author of Olivier’s mysterious paragraphs, but the calligraphies were distinctly different. Those paragraphs were carefully written, this was Zinnia’s typical levels of chaotic when taking notes.

“She… said she’d think about it,” he answered.

“Fuck…” Zinnia said, all too happy to be cursing.

“It’s actually _good,_ coming from her,” he said, leaning forward to pick one of his lost pencils.

Then he saw it.

The paragraph.

Detailed, carefully written.

And, most importantly, it contained the one word that confirmed it all when Buccaneer wouldn’t have dreamed of seeing it confirmed: _Olivier._

He kept on reading, squinting a little so he wouldn’t miss a word of it, all while pretending to be paying no attention to Zinnia. Olivier was everywhere in that paragraph and scratched out lines.

Buccaneer felt a great surge of pride out of nowhere, the same one he had the day Olivier Armstrong had been appointed Major General.

_I fucking have to tell Miles,_ he thought, _the son of a bitch was right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From next week on, I'm going to stop posting Adversity and instead I'll be uploading the Mermaid AU I wrote months ago in celebration of reaching 100k words, and that way I can keep on piling up chapters of Adversity, because I'm a little behind lately and I want to pick up the pace again >//<


	24. The calm before the storm

The length of a day was measured not in hours but in thoughts. Trapped inside the fort, Zinnia’s senses had little material to distract herself with. Her body, sore from all those mornings practicing, acted as an independent being, taking her to the room she was expected to be in without her paying the process of walking any mind.

She was lost elsewhere, in the continuous loop of memories and words. She hadn’t dreamed that encounter in the gymnasium, and she couldn’t keep lying to herself about this. For a moment—a brief but filling moment—the world had spun on its axis to give Zinnia the gift of feeling she wasn’t out of place. She had literally been on her back against the concrete, a failure of hand-to-hand combat even when she shouldn’t technically be, and yet she hadn’t wanted to leave.

Leaving was Zinnia’s thing, her cup of tea, the wind that propelled her forward. Time ago, at the bakery at Iver, all she’d dreamed of was for sundown so she could leave work and change into something comfortable. She had ended up nervously abandoning every place she’d hoped to one day call a home. And yet during that training session her instincts had glued her to the floor, fixing her eyes on Olivier’s.

And she had had nothing to analyze in that shared glance.

The truth had been laid out for her. For the both of them.

Zinnia had had a… feeling, when they’d both stood up again and composed themselves, that Olivier didn’t want to leave either.

And yet they’d both gone their own ways, to work, to take the entire day to think this through—think of the right words to say to the other at night.

And when night had fallen, Zinnia’s corrosively happy mood that Buccaneer had hated so deflated like a cloud after rain, vaporizing itself into nonexistence.

Olivier had closed herself up again, sitting on her bed as if nothing had happened.

To make matters worse, the next morning caught Zinnia unprepared and beamed its new light onto her wet cheeks. Rain fell from the skies, for now in the form of drizzle, but she could see the gray of the clouds threatening the valley in the distance. Inexorable, they would make their way here and bring hell down on all of their heads.

It made the walls smell like fresh paint, although nothing here was new. And instead of that distracting Zinnia, it infuriated her.

She was back to the kitchens, part time at least. Buccaneer always left to help the cooks, after his department and plants for the routes had become a distant reality of the past. Usually, Zinnia would be given leave to do as she pleased around the fort if he didn’t need her, but lately she’d decided against roaming without a heading, and she’d joined him there as well.

There was something about his rough character and his crude sense of humor that made her feel… protected against rougher things. His jokes and stories wore her down at times, but it was better than to wear herself down, which would have ended up happening anyway.

If she thought about her morning routine, trying and failing to, for once, just land a hit on Olivier, Zinnia lost her will to do anything else. So she didn’t. She let Buccaneer take her mind off of that with work and that route that hadn’t been approved of yet. She let the fumes of the kitchen reach her in the distance, since he hadn’t let her come close to actual food and had told her to do dishes. She let the time-warped rhythm of the patrol Olivier had eventually let her join force her brain to focus, and she slowly felt the devastating effects of all that combined exhaust her.

Any distraction would have been welcome at this point.

When she’d told Buccaneer in passing, a pile of dirty casseroles and trays left to wash, he’d laughed at her.

“She mostly just trains you for the ego boost. Feels good to knock someone down,” he’d said. “If you want to beat her up so hard, you need to start working out on your own. She’s never really gonna teach you anything useful if all she does is win at sparring.”

There were already thunders in the horizon of the audible spectrum, but nothing was as loud as Buccaneer’s voice, not even Briggs’ heavy machinery.

She’d just nodded to him, in silence.

The next morning she’d waken up before the sun, her face an image of what she was living, and headed upstairs, story after story, to train on her own.

She’d caressed the few weapons in here she recognized and sighed when she’d remembered her knives. Would they be buried in the cold by now? She wasn’t too sure now that she wouldn’t be needing them.

She couldn’t train with anything like that here, she’d never be allowed to take it with her on patrols. But she didn’t want to shoot at targets anymore. Once she’d figured out how the guns worked and gotten familiar with it, hitting the mark had become as easy as doing it with pointy knifes at home.

Zinnia had made a fist.

She wasn’t here to master anything, she just wanted to be good enough to not get thrown to the floor every time.

Olivier had tumbled over her time and time again, morning after morning, her face impassible, her motions clean and perfect. They hadn’t had a proper conversation since the day of the joke, and it didn’t look like that would be repeating itself anytime soon. Olivier just fought, taught, and left.

_I would let you kick my ass to infinity and beyond, yes,_ Zinnia thought now, getting rid of her jacket. She had recovered some of her old clothes, but they were mostly either spring dresses or rudimentary coats she’d stolen from Iver’s shops. Besides, wearing the uniform made her blend in. _But that doesn’t mean I won’t be kicking yours any time soon too._

The promise of ‘soon’ was what kept her going through the days. Waking up this early marked her face and posed difficulties in staying up anymore, yet she continued to do it. Eventually, she built a bit of strength, even over the last time she’d felt at her peak. It still failed to be enough to beat Olivier Armstrong—a name that did her justice, Zinnia had found.

All her life, she’d heard tales about the wealthy families of Amestris. The Armstrongs went back generations, yet the only Armstrong Zinnia had had a first name for as a teen had been Olivier.

_The Northern Wall of Briggs. The Ice Queen._ And variations of insults that Zinnia didn’t even think she could reproduce anywhere. As if the existence of a woman general immediately disrupted everything Amestris had been built on.

Olivier had both become a target and an icon.

To Zinnia, though, she had another name now. One that nobody had heard, and one that made her as much justice as her own family name:

_The Mountain at the Border._

When Zinnia fought her during training, it wasn’t a woman she was sparring with, not even a major general. When Zinnia stood before her, muscles tense and ready, she was hoping to defeat a mountain.

Every time Zinnia got close to quitting, the sun barely a line in the horizon, she forced herself to think about the kind of body and will required to best a mountain in combat.

_I have to keep going,_ she told herself as the sweat drenched her. _Soon…_ _very soon._

Soon, all of this would make sense, somehow. Soon, she would win a fight, and Olivier would look at her the same way she had that day when they’d both allowed themselves to fall, thinking that there would be a net at the bottom to catch them when they did. Soon, something would happen that would restore that ‘almost’ that had never truly bloomed into anything but silence and duty.

Yet days passed and that was nowhere near. She only had glimpses of hope to cling on to. She could only keep living, keep lying to herself.

_Have I ever done anything else?_

Well, that one time… she hadn’t needed to lie to herself. The universe had done it for her. She was still waiting for that version of reality to continue.

One particularly windy morning, cold like the heart of the killers of Ishval, Zinnia woke up alone in the room.

Brushing her eyelids, purplish now after waking up so early for so long, she got dressed between shivers and headed up. Today she took the elevator, the previous night had made her too tired for stairs. On the weekends, there was no training with the general. They both had things to do outside of that, and it made for an excellent excuse to sleep in, which neither really did. Even if Zinnia rose early on her days off as well, she typically didn’t train and just devoted her time to reading old writings of hers, or even trying to make new ones to come life, to no avail.

This morning she had every intention of not following that and just punching something until this… desperation and spiral of feelings heavy as lead faded a little.

_This is what happens to me when I dare to hope… I only meet the void. And it might be nice to stare into its eyes, they’re just not the eyes I want to look at. They will never be._

She pushed the handle down and kicked the door open, gently, with one of those yawns she would never dare to display in public.

A few steps in, she shut her mouth so abruptly she almost bit her lips.

Olivier was very much awake, and very much _almost_ naked from the waist up, and also very much beating the shit out of a punching bag.

Zinnia didn’t even notice she had stopped walking and was literally standing right by the door, eyes open wide and unable to look away because she hadn’t been caught staring yet and she doubted she was going to.

_Beating the shit out of it feels… like a lesser description of what’s actually happening,_ Zinnia thought. It was more apocalyptic than just brutal. She had never seen anything quite like this. If she’d thought she had been privy to Olivier’s full unabridged strength, Zinnia was now taking all of those thoughts back.

Olivier wasn’t a mountain right now, she was just energy. Energy an old god had angered, energy that took the shape of a human woman so that it may be channeled appropriately and destroy everyone at its proper time and place, not just in a final flame of destruction.

If Olivier’s hands had touched Zinnia now, as they normally did while training, Zinnia’s bones in her arm would have fractured.

For some reason, Olivier had taken off her undershirt and was fighting in loosely wrapped bandages and her uniform pants, and Zinnia felt positive that if any divinity ever dared set foot on Amestris, they would do so in Olivier Armstrong’s body. A body like hers was fit to be modeled in a statue for eternity to contemplate as eons passed, a copy of the weapon that had massacred the enemy and rendered lovers senseless.

Zinnia dug her nails on the back of her hands. _Which am I? The one that dies in her splendor? Or the one that kneels before her?_

Olivier still hadn’t noticed her presence. She was so absorbed in the imaginary fight she was leading, it would have been impossible for her to. She moved, faster than light, and every time her punch met the bag, the air was sucked out of some poor bastard’s planet in the universe. Her hair, too, seemed to know how to stay back, floating behind her, crashing against her back and shoulders which were shining in the gray light of the morning. Zinnia had never understood how she could wear it down and still beat her in seconds, with those blonde locks always getting in the way.

Eventually, Olivier was panting so hard, her muscles spasming often enough, that she had to stop.

And that’s when Zinnia’s heart beat excitedly, remembering the other day, remembering the hope she still held dear, and remembering that, unfortunately, she was very much standing there by the door like an idiot who very clearly had been ogling.

“Hey,” she greeted meekly.

Olivier locked eyes with her across the room, setting a hand on the punching back to stop it from swaying.

_She’s a god and I’m a grain of sand. She will crush me in her grasp. She will end me. I should be quiet and bow. But can I?_

Zinnia talked, unable to shut up: “How come you’re here this early?”

This was it, she could feel it. This was part II of that moment she had interrupted out of necessity to analyze it alone. They would share a glance again, hold hands somehow, and find answers in each other’s presence like they never did late at night, in the same room but miles and miles away from there.

This was how the universe patted her adorably in the head, leaned down and smiled at her, telling her that she’d been stupid for doubting its intentions and its signs, all carefully strewn over the past couple of days because they were meant to lead them here.

Zinnia began moving, walking—almost bouncing off the floor—towards Olivier, aching for a spar or just a chat. Maybe even both. Both could make the bags under her eyes disappear.

But Olivier just stared at her, and Zinnia could swear she’d glimpsed something there in the general’s eyes—something akin to hope.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said in the end, disinterested, picked up her jacket and left before Zinnia’s heart could drop to her feet, mumbling in confusion: _So… this really wasn’t … it?_

_I’m afraid…_ she thought to herself, in answer to herself, _there is no it. I’m afraid… my lies took over me._

She walked to the punching bag, still slightly moving back and forth, and stilled it with her own hand, then sighed. 

* * *

 

There was only one man in the showers when she came in and thankfully he was already walking out.

“Morning, General,” he said.

She didn’t say anything, not even bothering to consider he might think now he’d done something to cross her. Nothing had crossed her, nothing in particular. It was, quite simply, just everything.

Today, just _everything_.

Her knuckles hurt from her punching session earlier, yet she still dug them onto the slippery walls once she was alone.

“Did you really think she saw _anything_ in you?” she spoke out loud, to herself. Always to herself. _You fool, you depraved soul…. Haven’t you learned anything?_

Olivier was thirty-five years old, she had been alone for the last fifteen, and now it was too late for her to even try again. She _didn’t_ want to try again. She had just thought, briefly and stupidly—weak for the first time in literal decades—, that this time would be different, that now was the perfect moment. That she’d seen something in the flower girl that wasn’t really there, after all.

She let the shower run a little before she walked in. The water sprinkled her like drizzle, then slowly soaked her to the bone, her hair waves of molten gold. She gritted her teeth to keep herself from shedding one single tear.

“How could you let it happen?” she wondered aloud, her voice being swallowed by the water.

She had waited patiently, heart beating fast, every muscle of her body longing to move towards her goal, and then… nothing. A greeting and a nod and a smile. The _usual._

And today the girl came here when she had no reason to, just to flaunt how little _she_ cared, when Olivier couldn’t even focus anymore. She was a teenager once again, surrounded by things she wanted and could never even hope to have. She was alone and she was foolish for daring to hope anyway.

All because she ached. Deep in her stomach, in her belly, in her heart. The hidden parts of her pulsed with need, with want, with fear. Fifteen years and she had brought this feeling home with her again, she had let it sleep next to her, curl on her floors or on her bed. She had let it reach her bones, she had let it feed on her food and grow in the same place where Olivier herself had once grown into a woman of the military.

And for a second, even less than a second, all she’d repressed and pretended didn’t even exist had lain there, on the floor, right in front of her, and Olivier had let herself fall to meet it. She had fallen and she had been ready to never get back up again, because she wouldn’t be alone anymore.

But her dreams had cracked, made of feeble glass and little else. They had broken into tiny little pieces like the dreams of a teenager. Pointless, naïve, and only ever just dreams.

This time Olivier didn’t punch the wall. She let it hold her upright as she hugged herself. She leaned on the corner of the shower and she didn’t cry.

_Survival of the fittest,_ she repeated over and over again, like a mantra in her head. _Only the strong survive. Only the strong. You’ve only ever been strong, don’t stop now. Don’t you dare stop now…_

Deep in her stomach, in her belly, in her heart.

The image of a sleeping girl, curled on the wooden floor. What did she dream of? Where did her brain escape to while Olivier clung desperately to staying awake?

The image of a bubbly girl that fought back when poked. A girl who sold words instead of goods. A girl who smiled at her as if she _knew_ her, as if she knew her history and didn’t think of judging her for it, as if she saw in her more than just a general. A girl who had touched Olivier on scant occasions, and yet… _Whose touch I crave._

She lowered a hand down over her stomach, her bellybutton, her hip line, between her legs. And she pressed her forehead on the wall and let the water take her away to a dream in which she wouldn’t need to crave, for she would _experience_ instead. 

* * *

 

The day didn’t exactly get any better. None of this ever could.

She kept remembering echoes of the past, screaming at her that this was just repetition, what she deserved for not being there for Dew all those years ago. The universe was making her pay for it.

Another severed dream. Another pain she had to repress until it disappeared. Since when did silence have the power to hurt her so? Hadn’t she lived like this, among barely even proper sparks of words, for the entire year? Hadn’t she been ready to just accept it as her life? Why did it feel like punishment now, when nothing had changed?

_Because nothing has changed,_ Zinnia thought. And she’d been biting her nails, hoping eventually it would. Somewhere in her mind she told herself that hoping was for the weak, and she wasn’t. Not anymore. One did have to be strong to survive here.

Survival of the fittest. And in her case, survival of the stubborn.

Today, stubbornness was her only fuel. Stubbornness and refusal to give up. Letting the cold and the upcoming storm take her whole seemed like a good plan only from the inside of the fort.

As soon as she stepped out, ever faithful to Miles’s upkeep on the schedules and performing her duty as a fellow patroller, all ridiculous thoughts she may have entertained about running off in the distance and probably dying tragically in a blizzard turned to complaints muttered feebly as she joined her companion for the shift.

“Cold, eh?” he told her.

She immediately smiled to herself. It was absolutely forbidden, if you’d been living here long enough, to say a word against the cold. You had to like it, after a while, as if it were a pet of the fort that eventually everyone warmed up to. This man had to be one of the newbies.

“Fucking freezing,” she said.

She remembered him, now. He was the boy who had been nice to her on her first day, and who probably had spread shit about her cooking skills like everyone else, yet who now was being perfectly nice again. She could use ‘perfectly nice’ right now, after such a day.

“You’re the new girl, aren’t you?” he asked after a while of stomping on the snow to keep warm on the spot.

She laughed. “When was the last time there was any other girl in this place?”

“Fifteen years? That’s when the captain says General Armstrong came here.”

The captain being Buccaneer and his loud mouth. He must tell stories to the youngsters, she thought. Which clarified why she’d never listened to any outside of work. Once she left his company, she was invisible.

_Even more so now…_

Zinnia had to make an effort to remind herself he had no idea what had happened between her and the general—or rather, what _hadn’t_ happened—and so she couldn’t be rude to him because he was just being nice.

“Then I guess that makes me the ‘new girl’, no matter how long I’ve been here.”

“You don’t really get rid of that reputation for a long while, though,” he warned her. “I’m still new, too. And technically it’s been… I would say, forever.” Austin laughed. “Long enough.”

“Did you choose to come here? Or were you one of those recruits that are just needed?”

Austin blushed. “I would say I’m… the result of very clever threats that you don’t believe will be acted on until they are.”

“Oh. That’s…” Zinnia knew Briggs didn’t exactly have the best of reputations among military destinations, but for it to be so bad superiors used it as punishment…

Austin just smiled and shrugged.

“It’s not that bad, I’ve grown to like it here. I thought it would be much worse, the first few days.”

“Yeah, you and me both,” she muttered.

“Anyway, I’m here because I have to be, and I’m glad it’s more of a home than the hell I was promised. But _you_ ’re not here forever, you could choose to go back anytime.”

“I’m pretty sure my house is covered in snow right this second.” She smiled. “And my family is… half a world away.”

Which was actually true.

“Still, you have no reason to be getting used to any of this. It’s… curious, that you are, regardless.”

Zinnia sighed. “Might as well make a home out of this place,” she said it out of habit, even when she’d always stayed for different reasons than ‘might as well’. Something had lit up in her brain. Austin was right. She could _leave_. She didn’t have to stay. Not after… well, everything. She’d never been meant to, anyway. No one wanted her here, not even herself. She’d wanted something else, something that nobody could really give her, in the end.

“Might as well, yeah,” he said, but didn’t add anything else, perhaps waiting for her to. She didn’t.

After the silence that followed that conversation, Miles came to replace Austin’s double shift, and she started thinking about leaving. It started to take shape in her mind, as more than just a nation to entertain late at night when the quiet and the creaking of the pipes ate her alive.

Where could she go, realistically? Nowhere, not really. The farthest she could get in this weather was North City, and even then… it would be too cold over there to risk having to sleep rough if she didn’t find accommodation.

“Miles?” she asked. He hadn’t seemed to her as wanting to talk, he normally preferred to work in silence unless there were some things to be discussed, but she thought she might as well just give it a try.

“Yeah,” he said, turning amiably to look her in the eye.

“Can I ask you something?”

He smiled. “I thought I’d been appointed to be your eyes and ears in this place.”

Indeed, he had, and Zinnia couldn’t bear to look back at that moment now. So much had changed, but never in what was important to her. _What’s a job and a bed when… I’m as empty inside as the day I came?_ It didn’t occur to her that her reaction had a name, and that her feelings weren’t objective anymore.

“Yeah, well, I don’t need eyes and ears all that often, now.”

He nodded. “I’ve noticed. Regardless, what do you need?”

_Here it goes, for all it’s worth…_

“Do you know where people go, when they leave Iver in the winter?”

He seemed shocked at the question, like he’d expected something much, much more different to come out of her mouth. Perhaps he’d expected her to know the answer by now.

“North City,” he said. “Almost everyone around has a winter residence there. Why?”

That would explain Candie having most of her business over there.

“No reason,” Zinnia lied, her voice slightly high-pitched. The last thing she needed was to have him tell everyone why she was sorting out her priorities to take off and never come back. She could even pretend all of this had just been a nightmare.

_I was swallowed by the color blue on my first day up north, now all I ask is that it may spit me out and let me forget why I approached it in the first place,_ she would write if she had tools to now.

“They should’ve told you, you know?” Miles said, misinterpreting her general reaction, thinking it meant she was punishing herself for not having found out sooner about the migrations. “If you’ve never lived north before, you had no way to figure it out on your own.”

“No, it’s okay, I just… the concept feels pretty unrealistic to me. Not everyone can afford a second place.”

“That’s very true,” he agreed. “But, remember, this is the north. Almost everyone knows someone. Eventually, they find a house.” He sighed. “In the end, it’s just for a few months. When March comes, so will all of them.”

She thanked him. _But, really, sorry to break it to you, Miles, I’m not all that worried about my neighbors coming back but about me taking off_.

Zinnia finished her shift and went back inside, shivering. A late night wind had brewed up the past couple of hours, and the fort had already turned on some of the warm yellow lights. She walked straight through the coffee room; no head perked up to say hi to her, nor did she stop to greet anyone, although she recognized many of them.

She just wanted to get the snow off of her uniform and change into something gray and comfortable, then curl up on something horizontal and let the night fix everything that couldn’t be fixed manually.

Even her wooden bed didn’t sound so bad right now, as she stomped her way up to the top of the wall, where the wind creaked louder and there was little to do if one couldn’t fall asleep.

She fished her key out of one of her pockets and opened the door, expecting the room to be empty. Of course, because today was messing with Zinnia’s head day, Olivier was already inside, retired early to her chambers.

“Shit, sorry,” Zinnia said, immediately closing the door at the sight of bare skin. It was just her luck to run into her with one leg out of her night clothes.

Olivier smiled bitterly. “It’s alright,” she said. “Just come on in.”

Zinnia did, and tried to focus on changing out of the wet uniform herself, but she found that task daunting. For… some reason.

Olivier dropped her clothes on the back of the bed as if she didn’t care much how wrinkled they would be in the morning, and lay down on the mattress, back turned to Zinnia to give her some privacy.

Which she deeply appreciated. It wouldn’t really help her situation much to have the general snooping in on her. Normally, she’d step out to let her change in piece, but given that Olivier was already technically in bed, Zinnia felt bad just by thinking of asking her. They shared a room, they should be getting used to this.

Although… they would not have to keep doing it for too long. What did it matter, then, if they were prolonging it all a few more days?

Zinnia, too, got her blankets out as well as her pillow from the drawer, and set it all up on the floor. It was always cold at first, so she lay a blanket down for insulation, and then sat down, covering her lower half with the rest of the blankets.

After that, Olivier slowly turned on the bed. Zinnia had never seen her wake up, face turned at the wall. She always dawned the same way she fell asleep. Or, in case she moved too much, she always dawned looking in Zinnia’s direction.

Her big blue eyes were open now, and Zinnia had no idea whatsoever what went on behind them, what she was thinking. At a first glance, she might’ve even thought Olivier had just fallen asleep without closing her eyes.

“So,” Zinnia said, seeing how neither of them was going to turn off the lights for the night. She might as well just make small talk. “How… how was that, um, shower?”

“What shower?” Olivier asked.

“The one you… took,” Zinnia said. “Earlier this morning.”

Olivier’s face turned red as a sunset when it hid behind gray clouds at the clear memory of what happened earlier that day, of what she’d done in the name of feelings she understood less and less the more she thought about them. The girl couldn’t possibly know about any of this, she wouldn’t be asking this with a straight face. And Olivier needed to control herself so this wouldn’t escalate.

“It was just a shower,” she grumbled, turning her back to Zinnia once again to hide her flush.

Zinnia took the hint, got up to switch off the lights, and tried not to breathe too loudly as she lay awake for a while, thinking how the hell she had let it come this far when the truth was so very obvious.

_She doesn’t want you here,_ she reminded herself. No one did. Zinnia would be a fool to exclude Olivier from that list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back!!! And I can't wait to share what's coming next in the story.
> 
> I'm currently on chapter 48 and nearing the third act of the fic btw, so to say that I'm beyond excited is an understatement. I'm so looking forward to posting everything <3


	25. The storm she wished for

Zinnia let some days go by. She had to make absolutely sure, she told herself, that there really would be no chance for her to ever thrive here. In reality, though, she kept her eyes on the corners of every room or corridor she was in, waiting to see if maybe it all hadn’t been an ultimate illusion of hers and there was still a chance at … something in here that didn’t involve rudeness and doubts. If Olivier had made a move, just one and not necessarily towards the dream Zinnia had and refused to pay attention to—at least consciously—, Zinnia would have stopped clinging to the fantasy of leaving.

But Olivier didn’t. And as every new morning dawned, Zinnia’s mind grew more and more attached to the realization that Olivier _was never going to._ Whatever Zinnia’s reason truly was for having put up with Fort Briggs in all its glory for this long, it was growing thinner by the minute.

She didn’t dislike it as she had in the beginning, she had her routines, but something was lacking in her experience there. She had a hole right in the middle of her chest and it refused to guide her towards its own completion.

One night, she looked down at Olivier’s sleeping silhouette on the floor, clutching at her own chest to keep the hole from acting up, and at the third sigh coming out of her, Zinnia surrendered. At last. After so long of trying to still hold on, to still make it, to still pretend.

She couldn’t pretend if the woman she’d fallen for lived and breathed and _ignored_ her right under her same roof. It was torture, and Zinnia would really rather pick her own ways to torture herself. This wasn’t among her favorite, precisely.

_Tomorrow,_ she told herself. _I will ask for transport tomorrow. And then… and then…_

And then she would face the elements again. And her family, again. The next day, Zinnia would regress. But at least she’d be safe from the dangers that here alternated between haunting her mind and her reality in equal measure.

The sound woke her merely hours later. Winds and rain and thunder. The storm that had been on its sure way here for some time now. The entire room pulsed with gray light, intense and melancholy and gentle, in a way.

Olivier, too, had been affected by it. In this light, she looked like a ghost, dressed in her gray clothes for the night, and standing at the drawers to get out her uniform for the day. Her hair, too, moved as if underwater.

_So strange…_ Zinnia thought. _Any other one of us would look like one of those ugly monsters, but not her. Of course not her._

When she turned around, Zinnia’s eyes were lost in her general direction.

“Sorry I woke you,” Olivier muttered.

“Wasn’t you, don’t worry…”

“The storm?” Olivier asked.

“It’s … loud.”

Olivier smiled, her smile the tiniest bit sad. “Get used to it.” She sighed. “They’re typical this time of year.”

Zinnia said nothing.

“Do you mind if I change here?”

“Don’t mind me…” Zinnia said, she closed her eyes again and turned her back to Olivier.

Later, though, she heard the door slam and she breathed out.

_Another day in the nebulous reality of Briggs,_ Zinnia thought. _The last day…_

What should she do, to celebrate? Sneak something out of the kitchen while Buccaneer wasn’t looking? Or maybe just give everyone a bit extra? Would they smile at her as she did, now that the food wasn’t hers? Would that change her mind?

She smiled to herself as she got out of her mat on the floor.

No, she didn’t think she would. It was time for a change. A partial one, at least. There would always be time and room to run free after she found somewhere she could get on train.

A breath of fresh air, some ice cream, a blanket whose scent would transport her places, and she’d be good as new. She would put all of this behind, like she had done with the South Area. First the heat, now the cold. Candie had been right, Zinnia did like her extremes.

Hot and cold…

Those eyes. That was exactly what they were, a whirlpool of both, and you never knew to which of those belonged the wave that was coming at you.

_No!_ she screamed in her head when she caught herself thinking that. _No eyes. No nothing. Just work. Work and then…_

She ran down the stairs, since she was already running late.

“You look like a bear just mauled you from the inside out.”

“Good for the bear…” she mumbled, but Buccaneer heard her anyway.

“Oi, don’t be an asshole.”

Zinnia grumbled in response.

She sat down in her usual spot, going over the last drafted list of essentials they needed for the upcoming weeks. They had already gone through each item a few times, trying to cross some off to adjust to the fort’s general budget, but Buccaneer kept insisting they could just keep them since the general would do what she deemed appropriate at the very last second anyway.

He stared at her because of this. The fact that it remained on the table didn’t amount to it needing more work, and he knew Zinnia knew this.

“You sure you’re okay, kid?”

“Never better,” she said without looking up.

“Come on, don’t lie to good old Buccaneer,” he said, his gossip mode on. He’d smelled it on her like a hound. “Where has your charm gone?”

“Down the toilet?” she said, still not looking up.

“Hint taken…” he grumbled, leaving her alone at last. But his antennae had already swirled in on themselves, attuned to her. She seemed to him like a petite little cloud of grins and silly noises that sometimes remembered she was human and with value, especially if there were maps involved. This wasn’t typical of her. The short displays of aggressiveness or the like he’d seen in her looked nothing like this.

He felt an insatiable bout of curiosity about finding out exactly what was behind Zinnia’s moodiness. It could only be _good_ and _juicy_ and oh boy the men would love it. They already whispered things, from time to time, around a cup of muddy coffee, but nothing solid, and Miles refused to let him talk about… things… in public. Or in private. He refused to bring it up at all times, no matter how hard Buccaneer teased.

Something good and juicy indeed.

She kept suspiciously silent and grumpy all day long, even when she was finally allowed to leave him to his arduous tasks at the kitchens.

Then, it caught up with her, the fact that if she did this, there would be no way back. This invitation wouldn’t stand any longer. She wouldn’t be welcomed back. She’d be on her own. Besides, she was working from the assumption that they would provide her with transport to North City, at least. That would be one awkward car ride.

Regardless, she had a burning feeling in her stomach, pulsing against any scary thought about leaving. It was decided, it was the right plan. She wasn’t military, she didn’t belong.

_That sounds like the worst excuse ever,_ a voice said inside her head.

_Shush!_ she said to herself.

If her belly burned unintermittently, she had to listen to that.

She couldn’t ignore that, could she?

Even when faced with Olivier’s office and its perennial closed door, Zinnia ignored the parts of her screaming to get her to stay. They screamed louder, but she paid them no mind. They’d had longer than long to actually complain about this decision, now was not a good time.

She knocked and walked in. She had done this very thing often enough to have long since stopped feeling hysteria at the thought. Who cared? She was getting out. She could cut all ties right now, for all she cared. This would all be over soon. She could pretend it had never happened.

Blue. Black on white. Warmth and coldness. The smell of the walls on Briggs. The terrible coffee everyone drank.

_Shush…_ Zinnia told herself, more bleakly than before.

That room that stood as a bridge between alternate realities. The last thing Zinnia thought of before she closed her eyes for the night. That awkward feeling in her chest, right in the center of her torso.

It all swirled in her mind, pressuring against the walls of her brain, as she stood in the same spot she kept coming back to. And like every other time before now, Zinnia explained briefly the reason for her coming here once again, failing to look Olivier in the eye. Time ago she’d found a little trick to pretend she wasn’t falling apart, and it was done by staring at Miles’s table.

“You want to leave?” Olivier said in summary of her own words.

She couldn’t believe this. It was the imperfect ending to the nightmare of the last couple of days. An abrupt, cut-flower ending.

_She… wants… to go now? Why?_

“I wouldn’t want to be in your way.”

“You’re not,” Olivier said, louder than she’d meant to. “You’re contributing, just like anybody else.”

“There’s just something really wrong with the only woman here, other than you, working part-time in the kitchens.”

Olivier blinked in confusion, still trying to pass for regal and composed, but deep down she felt as if she’d jumped from somewhere really high without knowing what there was at the bottom.

Free fall for eternity. What sin had she committed to now be dealing with this?

She stammered the first response she could think of:

“I thought you’d settled well into your new job with Captain Buccaneer.” ~~~~

“That part is actually not the problem.”

Olivier sighed, understanding that the problem was the usefulness of Zinnia when she worked side by side with Buccaneer in the kitchen, which was actually a job she’d taken without anyone saying anything to her about it.

“… I’m open to putting you up to something else if you’d be more comfortable”

Suddenly, Miles laughed out loud. In one single chuckle were weeks and weeks and repressed bouts of laughter. But he covered it up rather nicely with a few coughs. In what world did Olivier Armstrong bend the rules to accommodate other people? As if she hadn’t already done it time and time again for a long while now. It never stopped being funny.

“It’s not just about that, really,” Zinnia said, trying not to put too much emphasis on it. _It’s about how you seem to abhor me and I don’t know how to fit in anywhere. I need to run. I need to run from my own failure_. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but… is there any way I could borrow, I don’t know, a horse? A car?”

Olivier’s jaw never dropped. It didn’t. It was, quite simply, one of those things that just did not happen. Rain never brought stones as it fell, horses didn’t bite chunks of meat off any prey, and Olivier didn’t let her jaw drop in public.

Especially not because of what was going through her at the moment. If the skies had split open to reveal a secret passage from Drachma’s parliament to the heart of Briggs, she would have hated it less than this.

The flower girl, leaving? Leaving for good, not just for a few hours to work. Leaving the floor and the bed and the kitchens. Leaving everything but her mind. Leaving _her._

As if Zinnia could have any reason why to stay. She’d made it abundantly clear she didn’t want to belong or mingle or exist in a military compound where Olivier reigned supreme.

_Could that be it?_ Olivier thought. _She’s leaving because of me?_

She looked down at her hands, laced together on the table, then back at the window behind her. The thick circular glass was covered in its entirety in rainwater, and more drops kept washing up there as time went by. The wind was not forgiving today. And, by the looks of it, Briggs was so surrounded by clouds it would take a while before this storm dissipated.

What was she to do? She’d followed through with all other of the girl’s requests, if she didn’t do the same with this one, she would be letting on a lot more information than she meant to. Besides, she had no authority to decide what to do beyond the point where Zinnia had been invited to stay. The girl wanted to leave now, Olivier had no jurisdiction in deciding she wouldn’t let her.

The problem was, did she have enough fortitude to let her go just like that?

Picking up on the awkward silence that her hesitance had caused, Olivier shook her head and replied:

“… I’ll arrange for a car to take you there after the blizzard’s dissipated.”

_Funny how they call anything ‘blizzard’_ , Zinnia wondered. How big a blizzard would this have to be for them to call it ‘storm’?

It was not like she’d expected a negative from the general, but this straight-forwardness and lack of emotion regarding the decision had shocked her indeed. All she’d seen was Olivier, bored enough at her request that she’d taken her sweet time to answer.

“Thank you,” Zinnia said. “It’s… really kind of you.”

_Is it?_ she thought, though. _Or is she just this eager to let you go?_

Miles broke his normal composure once again to mouth at her:

“Heart of gold, you just gotta get past a few miles of ice and snow first.”

Zinnia smiled nervously, in no mood right now to reply that she didn’t really think it was a matter of having a good heart.

“Don’t mention it,” Olivier said, oblivious to Miles’s little gesture. And it was, at heart, a measure of who she was talking to, because Olivier didn’t say nice stuff to people in dismissal, she just asked them out of the room.

The girl left as swiftly as she’d come, but things weren’t the same. Now, on top of worrying about the supplies that surely wouldn’t make it to the fort in this weather, Olivier was going to be unable to relax because of this one girl and her wishes.

_Leave… She wants to leave._

Miles chuckled again, softly.

“What?” she spat.

“Nothing.”

“Say it.”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’ll be… strange to watch her go, won’t it? She’s grown on us all, going from the onion girl to one of us in essentials if not in fact, how curious.”

Olivier rolled her eyes.

“Shut the fuck up, Miles,” she told him, “and do your job.” But she didn’t deny it. She didn’t even dare think of denying it. Because, in a way, it was true.

A civilian had made her way into the best defended military compound in history, and now the people there would feel her absence. Curious… and absurd.


	26. Fear and respect

_It doesn’t matter now. None of it does._

The flower girl was leaving when this storm ran its course. It was indeed a storm, and that was about the only consolation Olivier could find in the situation, that it would still last long enough. She feared the day she would get up in the morning and the sky would be clear blue.

She stopped holding back. Why would she? Whatever she did, whatever mistakes she made, whatever dishonor she brought on herself, the girl would take it all with her. It wasn’t worth it now to keep acting like someone had died and she was mourning. She only had one thing to mourn, and she’d already come to terms with the fact that the winter that had reigned supreme inside her for years was over. The currents of water within her had long ago thawed and over-spilled.

Her self-indulgence didn’t take up the whole duration of a day, because Olivier would not have been able to live with herself otherwise, so she contented herself with being the embodiment of spring only in the kitchens, sheltered by the noise and the food.

She made no efforts, now, to try and not spend obvious amounts of time with Zinnia. She made no efforts, either, to look for a table away from hers. Sometimes, Zinnia wasn’t alone there, sitting next to Austin or someone else, but Olivier joined them anyway, as if all the other empty spaces didn’t quite please her.

Like several other times before, they exchanged brief words. Only now Olivier didn’t stop at that. Why would she?

_It doesn’t matter now. She’s leaving anyway._ That acted as a blocker for every single thought she had that tried to convince her to leave.

Maybe part of her was trying to get Zinnia to stay, luring her in like a mermaid does with a sailor. Maybe she had just tired of playing around.

She realized this on the day she told the story of her trajectory in the military. Not in excruciating detail, not even in detail per se. But she was telling it to another human being, a civilian, a girl who would soon leave with all that knowledge intact in her head. One person would know the story of Olivier Armstrong the officer and that person wouldn’t even care about it.

Except Zinnia cared. Very obviously. Because she listened, without any intent to spread the information around like fresh gossip. To her, none of it was material for gossip, it was a story nobody else could tell and no one ever would.

Amestris feared and respected the woman who kept the north safe, but they ignored the existence of the circumstances that had led her there. All Olivier was for them was an impregnable wall nobody got near to and survived.

For others, perhaps a tiny group of people in the country, she signified certain change. No woman in the military had ever made it as far as she had, and Zinnia liked to imagine there were little girls all over the place who dreamed of one day being as fierce and efficient as General Armstrong.

“It must be nice,” Zinnia said over lunch that day. A bunch of soldiers had already been talking about it among themselves, and Zinnia’s brain had clung to their questions as if they were her own. She couldn’t go to bed tonight without hearing this story, “to know you’re the first of many.”

“Precisely because I’m the first I don’t think there _are_ many,” Olivier said with a quick snort.

Zinnia was surprised. “Don’t you know any other women in the military?”

“Of course. A few. But most are not allowed to climb up the ranks.”

“So how did _you_ manage it?” Zinnia asked, leaning on her open palm, moving closer without realizing it.

She had not expected to be having this conversation, or _a_ conversation, and she’d be damned if she let this opportunity pass her by. _Who are you? Just… who are you?_ Because Zinnia had traced lines in the sand trying to grasp what lay in the heart of this one woman, and then she’d retraced them on paper, but she must have surely missed so, so much. She wanted to fill in the blanks.

Olivier hesitated. How, indeed, had she done it? Talent? Stubbornness? Defiance? All of the above? Ultimately, the simplest answer couldn’t include any of those words.

“I fought a war and came out unscathed,” she said.

“You… fought in the Drachman Wars?”

Olivier smiled at the innocence visible in the girl’s smile. She hadn’t expected Zinnia to be up to date on military history, much less on something that was spoken of without mentioning many names. She’d been appointed Captain by the end of the conflict’s final truce, when many other male soldiers had ascended much more astronomically. It’d been the way to shut her up, and to ensure she caused no more trouble. Little had they known… you didn’t stop the Northern Wall of Briggs, she stopped _you._

“I _put an end_ to the Drachman Wars. The armistice was signed because of my team’s involvement in the negotiations.”

Zinnia leaned back on her seat. “Holy fuck…” She covered her mouth at once. She hadn’t meant to swear in front of Olivier.

Olivier sighed.

“That was a long time ago. War merits would make almost anyone get to my rank.”

“Not everyone has the actual guts to cross a border to talk an entire country into peace,” Zinnia reminded her.

_They do, if they’re ordered to,_ Olivier thought. _That’s how it works._

“For the most part, women like I used to be are kept in offices and under the rule of more important men.” She scoffed. “It’s the men that fight our wars. It’s the men that have a chance to really do something for our country.”

She spoke dispassionately but Zinnia could tell it was just a façade. She’d made note of the words ‘women like I used to be’. Nothing good hid behind that. Why the separation between them and herself? What had she become that she no longer felt part of that group?

“Lieutenant Hawkeye, from Eastern Command, for example,” Olivier continued. “She works for the greatest ass this country has ever given birth to.”

The men around her guffawed and echoed: “ _Colonel Roy Mustang_.”

Zinnia laughed with them, not understanding entirely but finding it funny nonetheless. Inside jokes always made one feel nice. She was lost as to names and personalities in the institution, though. To her, Briggs was all she needed to understand about the military. She’d never heard of this Mustang or his lieutenant, but she did infer that things weren’t exactly peaceful between him and Olivier.

“And she could aspire to so much more,” Olivier spoke again. “Without a patriarchy making that harder than it has to be.”

“It’s… a little sad that all a woman can do to ascend in the Amestris’ military is stop a war.”

Olivier took a sip of her drink. She had nothing to add to that. It was many more things than just sad, but she figured Zinnia had summarized it well enough.

“Did you always want to be soldier?” Zinnia asked what she thought was an innocuous question, but Olivier went pale and refused to look her in the eye.

She’d just wanted out. Wanting to be a soldier per se had come last, when she’d already almost been one. But the flower girl didn’t really care about that. Nobody did. And Olivier had made sure to put it behind her a long time ago. Olivier Armstrong the civilian was now nothing but a faint memory.

“No…” Olivier finally revealed in a grumble.

All that mattered now, more than anything else, was _being_ that soldier. Standing where no one else would, at the edge of the precipice to make sure no one else came close to the abyss. She was good at that. Her heart had chosen this path to stick to forever. She had chosen this family over the one she so intently meant to leave behind as a child.

All Olivier had, in the end, was her men and her fort. Everything else had long ago ceased to matter. Everything but this _war_ needed to stop mattering to her.

She pushed her chair away, picking her tray up as she did.

“Leaving already?” someone asked. Someone who, like Zinnia, had taken an interest in those stories. It wasn’t very often that the general would actually speak to them in this manner, in this setting. The storm had had an impact on people’s mood, after all.

“So should you,” Olivier replied to him. “Wars aren’t won while sitting on your asses, gorging on food.”

There were complicit stares in the little group of soldiers who had come to hear her talk about the good old golden days.

“Wars are won _when_ one’s sat down on one’s ass, gorging on food,” someone laughed.

“Not this one,” Olivier said, finally leaving. She didn’t feel like arguing. She didn’t feel like anything.

Zinnia watched her go, positive now that what had driven her away wasn’t the concept of wasting time during lunch but her question.

_Good thing I won’t be around to put up with this… embarrassment much longer,_ she thought, taking a look at the tiny windows in the room. The storm kept blowing in spirals around them, but soon enough it wouldn’t, and she’d be leaving embarrassment and unwanted feelings behind for good. 

* * *

 

_I never thought much of soldiers. I never thought much, really, about this country. It was just a place to live, a place to roam, and a place to leave one day. I didn’t like the fact that men dressed in blue could control my fate, or the fate of my people. But I’d never really learned what these men do, as a whole, or what the invisible gears of the structure do in all of this. Until I met a gear itself. With a name she had made for herself, fit for the role she played in wars and diplomacy alike. She has killed, and I know this. She has led battalions into the snow and returned with many casualties on her side, men bleeding from their shoulder sockets and men that will have to bury other men. She has stood there for years, whether what rained upon her were harsh critiques or praise she never meant to appropriate. And it is strange, very strange indeed, that the same woman our country both fears and respects is never looked at as that, as … a woman. A woman who wasn’t always a soldier, a woman who didn’t always think of becoming one.  Amestris doesn’t know the story of that woman, and she’ll never tell it, but I often dream that my words will be the first to tell it. If she let me. If my words actually mattered._

“Psst, Miles… Take a look at this,” Buccaneer broke the silence, lifting his arm to show it to him. They were locked inside Olivier’s office. Buccaneer had come wait for Miles so they could go grab some snacks together during their break, but instead they’d hobbled around a new piece of paper neatly placed on Olivier’s table. It’d been placed there overnight, blooming from the wood like a seed breaches the surface of the soil it used to hide beneath. “I’m damn right sure this is a new one. She even talks about me.”

Regardless of whether that was true or not, Buccaneer would always see himself reflected wherever there were mentions of shoulder sockets and copious bleeding.

“Give me that,” Miles said, taking it into his hands to inspect it. “Alright, it is new.”

“What is the meaning of this? The kid’s just leaving them around for Olivier to read now?” The last time he’d seen anything handwritten it had been at work, and Zinnia almost always crumbled the remnants of her creativity and put them all away. Buccaneer often followed temptation all the way and salvaged them from being shredded to bits. It was the closest thing to a magazine he had.

“Apparently, she is…” Miles mumbled.

How long had it been since the last one? He couldn’t help but wonder what had sparked the return to this strange little voyeuristic hobby _now,_ of all times. Literally in the heart of a storm.

Buccaneer seemed to be of a mind with him.

“Just like that?”

“I don’t know, I’m not in her head.”

Buccaneer cleared his throat. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s… different than the usual,” Miles said hesitatingly.

“It’s _good._ And it means she’s done some research.”

“Or been around to listen to us give out information.”

“Or done research,” Buccaneer insisted. He found it so appealing that this was all coming together this nicely. All those little clues they’d thought about and all they’d talked about in hiding. Zinnia _was_ writing things, or she had in the past to come back to it now, and this confirmed it much more directly than Buccaneer catching her red-handed ever could. This was _evidence._

“It would not be that hard to write this without research,” Miles pointed out, looking at the page. “All she’d need is to have heard of the general and… some imagination, which the girl does have.”

“Wait! There’s a couple more.” Like a thirsty man about to dunk his head in a lake, Buccaneer fished them out from under other papers and sniffed at them to ascertain their origin. “Smells new to me.”

Miles blinked slowly, crossing his arms. “You’re disgusting, d’you know that?”

He walked to Buccaneer and tried to get hold of the newest paragraph, but the captain was too tall, and even with Miles standing on tiptoe it would be an impossible mission.

“The general is going to come back at any moment and I swear I will pretend I don’t have anything to do with this…” Miles left the new piece of writing on the table, exactly where Buccaneer had found it, as Buccaneer read the others he’d found.

He chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

He then began to read out loud:

_I keep thinking to myself this is all I deserve, to stand in this shadow and content myself with a glimpse of the sun and the mountains. I walk and I talk and I become a part of me I didn’t think existed, and it’s all because I was taken in, given a bed and a job and something to desire. What does she desire, the one who made all of this possible? Is she still all about a war she stopped or has she slowly found more things in this military fort than the sole duty it entails to be a soldier?_

“This girl has the hots for her,” Buccaneer claimed as if he had been gifted with the whole truth.

Miles sighed, failing to see the allegedly obvious declaration of love in a paragraph that spoke mainly of Zinnia’s curiosity towards the motifs Olivier had to be where she was to this day. He saw something very different.

“She’s bored,” he said. “There’s no one around for her to play with. We’re old goats, boring and dull.”

“And also really incapable of maintaining a conversation that’s not about gossip or work,” Buccaneer added, nodding vigorously. “She’s a nice gal. Works hard, has ideas…I’d gladly let her take my job so I could pressure the general until she lets me get back out there.”

A new guffaw followed his words. They both knew he was never getting back out there.

“I don’t understand…” Miles said, musing. “She’s asked for transport so she can leave. Why is she writing again?”

“Wait, what?” Buccaneer said. He hadn’t heard of this yet and felt immensely betrayed his friend Miles hadn’t told him before. He would have felt doubly betrayed if he’d known Miles had been present for it. “She’s leaving?”

“Yeah, when the storm passes,” Miles replied. “That’s what I can’t wrap my head around. All she has to do is wait it out, but she’s… getting in deeper, somehow.”

Buccaneer made a ‘told you so’ face, eyebrows up, tense smile.

“Has the hots for our boss,” he concluded.

And then the door opened. And it… was their very boss herself.

Julian Buccaneer had thought himself fearless at this point in life. What he hadn’t seen didn’t exist, possibly. Even pain had ceased to be an obstacle for him. At his height, weight, and general complexion, pain couldn’t stop him. Not entirely.

Today he would feel fear for the first time in a long time. And he would not like it.

Olivier stomped into the room and his face fell. He didn’t move, and neither did Miles, and it didn’t take her very long to realize why. She walked to her desk and curiously leaned to see what this piece of paper was, surely another complaint from the number one complainer in her midst, and she almost lost her balance.

She knew this handwriting, she knew this way to link words together, she would have printed every one of those words onto her skin if she had been able to. And… Buccaneer was standing suspiciously close to them. To her words. Words she now had to treasure more than ever, because when their owner left… they would be leaving to. Forever, this time.

On second thought, the words leaving didn’t hurt her the most. They had left before, and she’d mourned them well. But Olivier couldn’t mourn a person who hadn’t passed, just left her.

_She’s not leaving you, she’s just_ leaving _._

She glared at Buccaneer, just to test him, just to see if her suspicions were correct. She’d known for a while that they talked about her, because they talked about everything and mainly because Buccaneer had a nonexistent filter when it came to telling stories, untrue or not. But what she hadn’t known is that they’d _read_ something this private. If asked about it prior to this day, she would have defended them and said that such exemplary soldiers would never do something so wrong—and so _stupid._

When Buccaneer only smiled nervously and rubbed at the back of his neck, she didn’t need to probe anymore. They were, after all, idiots.

“What is the meaning of this?” she hissed at them both. She didn’t know who her anger was directed towards, the man who couldn’t help himself when in the face of juicy news or the man who before today had always known how to behave spotlessly. “What are you two doing here?”

“Just… chatting,” Buccaneer said. He had the audacity not to wipe that smug smile off his face.

“Chatting…” She tsked. “You could _chat_ in the corridor. If Miles isn’t working,” she continued through gritted teeth, trying to comport herself with dignity—just a shred of it, for the love of alkahestry, “which I understand he _isn’t,_ this place is out of bounds.”

Buccaneer now made a mistake that would spark that old fear back into his old bones. He laughed as if he got to do this every day. Miles cowered by his side, trying not to look like he shared Buccaneer’s views on this.

“Quite an admirer you’ve got there, boss,” he said. “I was starting to think she’d _emigrated_ , like everyone else.”

And that was the last straw. Confirmation? Not only had she suddenly been thrown under a waterfall of it, but she was also discovering this didn’t go just as far as prying on her private affairs.

Olivier slammed her fist on the table. Miles was surprised it didn’t crack.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” she bellowed. “How long have you dared to keep this up?”

“Hey, it wasn’t just me, Miles was in on it too,” Buccaneer tried to defend himself.

“OH, I AM NOT JUST CONDEMNING _YOU_ FOR THIS, MAKE NO MISTAKE,” she yelled. “You dare inspect my private belongings, you _dare_ gossip about them among yourselves as if this was a filthy Central magazine, _you dare stand here like careless schoolboys and not apologize to me?_ ”

“General, I—” Miles said, trying to appease her. He knew what was coming, and he also knew he wasn’t ready for it. He had always been a loyal adjutant; always standing by her, never against her. This should be disappointing to her, but it also was so to him. He didn’t want to lose her respect, and he had a feeling he might have already. Just now.

“What’s the proper punishment for misconduct towards a superior officer?” she said. “Ah, yes, two years’ imprisonment. For the _both_ of you.”

The two of them gulped in response. They had seen ‘furious’ from her before, even tremendously enraged, but what they were being witness to now went much further than that.

“You had no right, and you leave me with no choice.”

Miles held his breath and closed his eyes as Buccaneer laced an arm with his and squeezed. This was it, then? They were going down, rightfully as they should. Two years… two years in a cell, next to the hellish boilers and surrounded by the judgment of their peers. For… walking the line like fools. They had forgotten, once again, that this woman right here wasn’t their friend. She wouldn’t act like one either just because they might have expected her to.

When Miles opened his eyes again, though, she was tidying up her desk, and her hair hid her face. But she was quiet. Eerily so.

She grabbed a pile of pieces of paper and put them in a drawer, then locked it.

“I never thought I’d have to forcefully keep secrets from you two, of all people.” She was smiling sadly when she turned to them again. Miles couldn’t believe his eyes. All her wrath had faded quickly into something he couldn’t name. And somehow that stirred more than just fear within him. “But it seems it will have to be that way.”

“So…” Buccaneer dared to say. “No imprisonment, then?”

“I’ve accumulated more infractions than anyone else here, and no one of you reported me to the senior officers.” Olivier shrugged. “Fair’s fair.”

Miles couldn’t help thinking that her infractions were normally along the line of refusing to follow protocol every hour of every single day, while they had literally broken and entered into her office to read her private mail.

“Besides,” she continued, “I can’t afford to let either of you go. Especially now.” Now, her face contorted into a more angry expression, more fitting for the situation. “But,” she said, “I won’t be so lenient next time. I don’t care how precarious the situation might be, if this happens again, you will both be imprisoned.”

Buccaneer smirked at Miles, and in that moment she knew that whatever she might threaten to do, they would circle around it anyway. If she forbade them to use the stairs and elevators in the fort, they would grow wings just to defy her without technically ignoring orders.

And that’s how it was. Buccaneer didn’t wait much more than five minutes until he was alone with Miles again to scheme.

“I saw myself inside a cell for a sec there,” he confessed.

Miles punched him in the left arm. If he punched the right, which had happened sometimes when the captain wore long sleeves and Miles forgot which arm was which, his own knuckles would throb for hours.

“Did you learn your lesson yet?”

Miles walked away. Buccaneer followed him hastily.

“Hey, Miles, come on, man. Don’t you see? It gets better. It isn’t just one-way curiosity. It’s not. Did you see her face? Did you see her determination to make us pay?”

Miles turned around, just as determined to end this here and now so he could go on with his tasks.

“Of course I saw. Do you not think she would have sent us to jail for this? Don’t you know her already, Buccaneer?”

“You’re not getting it.”

“I am!” Miles exploded. Buccaneer took a step back to let him calm down. “Look, I’m here because she lets me be. I’m still _alive_ because she pulled strings. I owe it to her to stop this now. You do whatever you want.”

“Miles,” Buccaneer insisted. “This is happening. She’s curious about the girl.”

“She could be curious about a candlestick, it makes no difference to me.”

“What? Scared of some risk, Major?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “What does it matter if there’s something there? What is it to us? I won’t throw my entire career and survival away just so you can have some laughs.”

“It might’ve been like that at first but…” Buccaneer sighed. “You feel the same way as I do, I know that much. You think it too, that the general deserves to be happy.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but let her do it her own way. And let’s not get involved in any of it, okay?”

Buccaneer let him go this time, but he couldn’t help thinking that given the precise moment Miles, too, scared as he was of being outted and humiliated for this mistake that was mostly just Buccaneer’s own fault, would position himself here as well.

If Olivier’s happiness was at stake, he knew Miles would risk his own career. Without hesitation.

Buccaneer rubbed his hands together. He needed more people on his side, first, in order to convince him.

* * *

 

Once the thunder started, the tensions within the fort grew. One morning, when Zinnia went to check in the weekly schedule Miles usually had ready by now, she found a big notice on the board warning about patrols having been cancelled because of the weather.

She approached Buccaneer, who was wandering around there with a group of the youngest men, talking animatedly to them with his best gallant grin all ready to charm them into doing whatever he wanted. Probably doing dishes in the kitchens for him, she thought.

“... is everything clear, then?” Buccaneer was telling the men. “Make her feel welcome here, and eventually we’ll see some—” He giggled. “—results from the boss.”

“Yeah, a happy boss means a happy environment,” someone chorused.

There were some laughs, and suddenly they dispersed as the soldiers caught sight of Zinnia coming near them. They all stood straight, chins up, and Buccaneer tried to sneak out, to no avail.

“Going anywhere?” Zinnia asked him.

“Nah, just… you know, I should be getting back to work.” He looked as his wrist as if he had a watch there. “Would you _look at the_ _time_? I’m late!”

“You look suspiciously distracted today,” she commented with a chuckle. “Anyway, what’s up with the patrols?”

“Oh, right,” Buccaneer said, as the rest of his troupe returned to whatever they’d been doing before. “The general cut them short this week.”

“I thought you were the mighty Briggs soldiers, capable of weathering any storm,” she teased with a huge smile on her face, arms crossed.

“Yeah, that’s in theory, kid,” he said. “In practice it looks pretty undignified to have a bunch of our guys die of hypothermia.”

“Then I might as well find something else to do,” she said, sighing.

Buccaneer saw his chance and seized it without a doubt.

“You know, I heard some guys say they needed help shielding the open areas from the cold. You up for that?”

If she said yes, his plan would slowly come to be a reality.

“I’ll ask around,” she said. “Thanks.”

When she left, Buccaneer celebrated this small victory. One step closer to subtly convincing the girl to stay, one step closer to lifting the general’s spirits, and if things continued that way, maybe she would even forgive him and Miles for snooping. And, besides, this would all circulate around the fort like someone had overthrown the Führer, and they’d have something to talk about for a long, long time.

This could last them the winter.   

* * *

 

She found the group of men Buccaneer had spoken of and joined them silently in their task of cleaning up the areas open to the wind and frost. Someone had to do it, and it was better to do it in the early afternoon that at night, when you might accidentally end up being turned into a stalagmite as well.

It took her by surprise when the men didn’t work in silence like she’d planned and started talking just to offer her a better tool to take the ice off of the ceiling or hand her over a thermos of warm coffee to make the work a bit more bearable.

At some point, even, one of them chitchatted with her.

“Scared?” he asked her.

She laughed nervously. “About what, the storm?”

“Is it your first?”

“It’s just a storm. Can’t get us here,” she said, meaning the fort.

_What the major fuck is going on here?_ she wondered, though.

People didn’t change their minds about you overnight, and without any reason behind it. She was still the mess at the kitchens, and pretty much invisible now that she’d stopped asking for things. The final request she’d made had been approved, she had nothing else to ask of the general. She could just wait and make herself useful meanwhile. It was the least she could do, in return for the fort’s… hospitality.

“Not literally,” he said. “Haven’t you ever heard the stories the captain tells?”

“Buccaneer? He tells an awful lot of them.”

“Mostly he goes on about how storms can wreck us from the inside anyway,” he said, “but I think that one’s bullshit to scare the newbies off.”

“Ah,” she said, not knowing what to say to that.

“But he also tells a few about how storms can show you the way.”

Zinnia smiled. “And then he mentions the arm.”

“And then he mentions the arm,” the soldier confirmed it, and they both started laughing.

“Nice way to find one’s way, isn’t it?” she commented after a while. “Trapped inside a military fort because of the weather.”

The man shrugged.

“There’s worse things. You could be trapped here for different reasons.”

And then silence fell, as if this little moment had never taken place. She thought about it. That had been too deliberate, exquisitely deliberate on his part. This was a man whose face rang a bell, because in the end they all lived under the same roof, but Zinnia had never spoken to him before. How did he know to say those words to her?

How did he know her feelings so well to throw them back at her and make her think?

She could summarize it in one word, after a while.

Buccaneer.

He’d set the boys up to let her join this patching up chore of his own orchestration, he’d put them up to chatting with her and plant this idea into her head.

_And why the hell would Captain Buccaneer now want me to stay? What’s in it for him?_  

* * *

 

Olivier’s mood didn’t recede from anger after the little scene she’d run into with Miles and Buccaneer. She’d let it pass, because she couldn’t afford to think about this for too long. Whatever they’d inferred from those paragraphs was out of her reach, and she was not going to ask them to tell her just to ease her own mind. She had a job to do, above all things, and a mantra to stick to.

_Nothing matters. Only this. Only my order and law. Little else. Nothing else._

A phone rang, scaring her a little. She composed herself when she realized it was her phone and picked it up with reluctance.

“General Armstrong?” they said over the line.

She confirmed that it was indeed her, and how unlucky that she had to be. Anywhere in the country she could go, people would murmur about her behind her back, trying to make their opinions of her the only prevailing truth. Couldn’t she just be another woman, passing unnoticed? Couldn’t she live her life in peace?

_What life?_

“I’m sorry to have to inform you that the shipment meant to arrive at Briggs this week is to remain on North City because of the weather conditions, ma’am.”

She didn’t bother to correct them on honorifics. She had bigger fish to fry.

“Excuse me?”

She could practically feel the other person cower in fear. _Good,_ she thought. This was the only good thing that had ever come with her reputation.

“I—uh—the transport won’t be able to make it past the storm, I apologize.”

“And what do you expect we will do if we can’t have access to what we need? Shape it all out of rocks?” she croaked.

“There’s… there’s nothing we can do, we’re terribly sorry.”

“Is there anyone in this godforsaken place who knows how to do their job??” she shouted, immediately slamming the phone back on its place and ending the call.

How the hell they were supposed to do without provisions for the whole duration of the storm, she didn’t know. And they couldn’t hunt for food, either.

How the hell was she supposed to survive this, too? How the hell was she supposed to deal with all of this at the same time? The idiots—her idiots—and the girl and everything that came to mind when thinking about the girl, keeping the place ready just in case, and now this. Now this… 

* * *

 

His scheming eventually turned into something less abstract. He’d already shared it enough times that he was beginning to forget about who he had told and who he hadn’t.

When Miles had first seen Buccaneer surrounded by men, discussing something very animatedly for it to be work, he had gotten angry and had tried to leave again, alleging how much of a nuisance it could be to be friends with Buccaneer. But he hadn’t been able to stay away from it all for too long. Buccaneer might have been boisterous and had little respect for privacy, but his heart was in the right place, at the end of the day. If he didn’t care about privacy that was about because for as long as he’d been here, he’d had none and he’d lost sight of the limits it defined.

Eventually, Miles had ended up talking to him again. This fort was lonely without his loudness to fill the silence and space. And, little by little, he’d been unable to turn a deaf ear whenever Buccaneer discussed his plan out loud.

The shape of said plan remained indefinite, its goal as the only fixed point on it, and Buccaneer wouldn’t hesitate before bringing it up everywhere. He no longer hid his endeavors, and while Miles couldn’t wrap his head around why he would defy Olivier like that, he could only admire his stubbornness.

“We need to do something,” Buccaneer told him over dinner one day.

“Why do I get the feeling that you already are?”

“I am, but that’s not the point.”

Miles sighed.

“What do you want to do something about?”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the general to kill me when she’s in a mood. And she’d been in a mood for _days._ ”

Miles raised his eyebrow. That was the understatement of the year, possibly the decade as well. “And?”

“And I think I figured out a way to lighten her up a little.” Buccaneer grinned happily.

“Without meddling?”

“Meddling…” he admitted.

“You did say you didn’t want her to kill you, right?”

“She won’t, because she’ll be too happy to,” Buccaneer said. “I’m gonna make Zinnia stay. I’m subtly hinting at it, involving her more, having people compliment her on her outfit—” he said, as if that’s what he thought made girls feel welcome.

Miles raised his eyebrow again, but it felt like the only logical reaction, to act as Buccaneer’s moral compass. Or, at the very least, logical compass. “She wears the same thing we all do.”

“But it looks good on her! It doesn’t look good on all of us. For example, it heightens the beautiful shape of my chest, but it makes you look like a tree trunk.”

Rolling his eyes, Miles focused once again on his food rather than Buccaneer. “Thanks.”

“So that’s what I’m doing at the moment. Do you want in?”

Despite all their bickering and all the shared information, this was the first time Buccaneer was asking directly. It had to count for something.

Miles sighed. “If I did,” he said, “what would I need to do?”

“Olivier doesn’t scare you as much,” Buccaneer said, thinking out loud. He had that thinking face where nothing wrinkled more than as usual but you could still tell he as weighing his options. “You could convince her to force the girl to stay. Or if we ever come up with a _real_ plan to set them up, you could deal with her, push her towards Zinnia without arousing suspicion.”

“I’ll talk to her, then…” Miles yawned. “Without the patrols, I’m bored out of my mind. I might as well.”

“I’ll keep you informed!”

And so he did. He had a few men already working on the environment of the fort, talking more and more people into just being nice neighbors and greet Zinnia in the hallways, although it was still hard for some of them to forget the disasters in the kitchen that Buccaneer himself had criticized so openly and so often. But just like they’d listened to him then, they paid attention to this sudden change of heart he preached every single day of his life. And soon enough, he was sure Zinnia would be surrounded by kindness she hadn’t even realized at first was even there. It was like boiling a frog slowly to keep it from jumping away. Exactly like that.

One morning, while Zinnia and Buccaneer waited for something nice to do once work was over, she mentioned to him in passing about how she missed her books. When she’d asked for some of her things to be retrieved from Iver, she’d only requested some of them back, but after a while she’d already reread them too many times and just craved for new stories that she didn’t have to write herself.

Buccaneer had seen the clouds part and the sky shine in that moment. He knew just what to do to keep his plain steady and going.

“Yo, kid,” he told Austin one day in the kitchens, a new and almost official headquarters to his little project.

Austin approached him with respect in his body because he was too scared to actually call it fear. It wouldn’t be the first time Buccaneer called him to send him on a bizarre mission that later turned out to be just a whim the captain had had in that moment. Austin meant to avoid that now if he could.

“Y-yes, sir?” he said, chest puffed up. Buccaneer laughed at his youth. He could use that hidden cuteness to his advantage.

“What’d you think of the new girl?”

“Oh,” Austin said, visibly relieved that Buccaneer wasn’t about to prank him or order him to do something. “She’s… she’s nice. A little quiet. Works hard?” He ended it like a question, unsure of why he was being asked this.

“How would you feel about her staying longer with us?”

Austin blinked. His suspicions of this being just another joke began to rise. “Sir, I don’t know why I…”

“Just answer the question.”

What did the new girl have to do with anything? Austin wondered. Had he been seen with her that one time and now Buccaneer was spreading gossip about him liking her or something? This would turn into the academy all over again in record time if he played it like he had back then.

He cleared his throat and tried not to blush.

“Yeah. I mean, why not?” he said. “The more the merrier.”

Buccaneer patted him in the pack, almost doubling him over.

“Perfect,” he said. “She talk to you much?”

“Not really…” Austin mumbled, praying to whatever deity existed and could be listening that Buccaneer didn’t ask if he liked her. His embarrassment would earn him a nickname for sure.

“Then you’ll do, she won’t suspect you.”

Austin’s gaze was inquisitive.

“I need ya to somehow get it into her head she needs to be at the library tomorrow after lunch,” Buccaneer said, almost in a whisper. He kept looking around to try and see if anyone foreign to his plan was listening. “Can you do that for old Buccaneer?”

Austin rubbed at the back of his neck.

“I… I guess I can, why?”

“Because if this works out, she might stay and help us for a long, long time, kid,” he said, finally leaving Austin alone to the boy’s relief, humming happily a tune to himself.

According to his calculations, if everything had gone as it should, Miles would be upstairs just about to finish convincing Olivier of the same thing. Tomorrow was about to be a memorable day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It says a lot about me that I reread this looking for typos and instead end up laughing at the dialogue :D


	27. Raining words

The strangest thing had happened. Olivier had summoned Zinnia via someone else. They shared a room, couldn’t she just say the word before they both got out of bed? Zinnia suspected she was still upset about the scene in the kitchens. She should have never asked something so personal. She didn’t think she’d react any more nicely than Olivier had if someone brought her past up. The past may shape a person up to the very brink of the present, but that didn’t mean its thorns couldn’t wrap around you even years in the future.

Austin, the poor thing, hadn’t known very well how to break it to her. Zinnia had thought up to that moment that he was already a homogeneous part of the fort, all his ties to Central finally gone, but she’d given herself a few more minutes to decide if that was entirely true. He had even shaken a little when he’d told her.

How unkind of Olivier, Zinnia had thought for a second, to have that boy deliver such a message. If she had any problem with Zinnia, she should be the one to address it, not use someone else.

But as Buccaneer used to put it in his fond way, she was the boss of them and if she thought it best, she would do that type of thing. Zinnia didn’t know the full extent of the sacrifices that woman had been ready to make in her years of being a general, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She was content—and terrified enough—with this much information already.

Her surprise overtook everything else. She couldn’t be afraid for too long, her questions began flooding her neurons and the rest of the world paled in comparison.

_Why the library? I didn’t even know there was one._ She would’ve have gone hide there more often if she had. This place definitely could still surprise her, after so long. If she opened the wrong door, a new aisle would appear and she’d have no choice but to go right in and explore every inch.

Today, though, following Austin’s indications, Zinnia decided to ask Miles for directions. Since the patrols had become a technical impossibility, the man now had little to do, and she convinced herself she wouldn’t be bothering him.

She rapped softly on the door, holding her breath because she was well aware he was seldom alone inside that office, and let all of her air out when she saw that, for once, it was just him.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Zinnia said. “Can you by any chance tell me where the library is?”

Miles didn’t seem particularly busy at the moment, so it didn’t strike her as strange that he immediately stood up.

“It’s better if I show you,” he said, leading the way out of the room. “It’s well-hidden.”

Zinnia was in no way in on Buccaneer’s plan and had no way to guess that Miles was invested in getting it to work. If not because he condoned the involvement per se, at least because he cared about his superior and did think that this meddling could get her somewhere.

Immunity had been bestowed upon him and Buccaneer once. Now, they were counting on their numbers to protect them against Olivier’s justified rage.

After this, Miles heavily suspected she might. She was one of the most cunning soldiers on Amestrian soil. This wouldn’t go unnoticed to her. And still… he felt incapable of turning around.

He took Zinnia to the very doors of the library.

“Anything specific you’re looking for?” he asked her when he noticed her attention had been immediately directed at the dusty dark bookshelves.

He hadn’t spent much time here. He’d never had much time to devote to leisure. And he hadn’t really felt a need to find said time either.

Zinnia shook her head, jaw dropping.

“No, I just…” she said, trailing off in her awe. “Olivier asked me here. D’you know where she might be?”

“She left the office not that long ago,” Miles said, leaning on the door. He’d taken it upon himself to make sure that Olivier did indeed leave for a few minutes, so he could go walk with her later and bring her here. Yesterday he’d asked if she could come with him to the library, because he’d found something he thought she might find useful. And instead of demanding to have that material brought to her, Olivier had agreed to inspecting it herself today.

None of these women had any idea what was going on. Buccaneer would be proud.

“If I cross her on the way down, I’ll let her know you’re waiting,” Miles said, closing the door.

Zinnia toured the small library. She couldn’t believe there were these many books here, and that they always had been right under her nose and she’d never found them. Something as necessary and as entertaining as this and she hadn’t bumped into it during those days she’d had nothing to do but roam free.

She passed fingers over many of them, her pads dustier by the second as she did. If she was still on cleaning duty…

Their titles didn’t grab her, although her heart still beat excitedly at the thought of so much information she could have access to. Now, in this storm, all she could do was wait and push _certain thoughts_ away, so far away they would never come back. As far as she knew, the endless bouts of boredom was a common occurrence to all of the men as well. Without patrols and being able to go outside, they now had a few hours of free time no one knew what to devote to. Most slept or just lounged somewhere; Zinnia, now, had the hunch she might spend them curled over here with a duster and some encyclopedia about flowers or something.

Words… She would be able to let words take her far—actual printed words, not just the one inside her head and on Buccaneer’s waste paper.

“Well?” Olivier’s voice said.

_SHIT._ _Fuck. No. No no no no no._

The door of the library opened and closed in a short slam.

“I left it right here…” Miles mumbled. “Someone must’ve put it back.”

Even if Zinnia couldn’t see it, she was sure Olivier was rolling her eyes. She did that, sometimes, when she was mildly frustrated. She’d cross her arms or frown or roll her eyes, and that meant you could still grab her attention if you performed well. If, on the other hand, she could barely look at you and her voice carried so much dullness, you’d better try another day. And Zinnia had heard that there came a point when you couldn’t see her fist coming to hit the table, because you were already too frozen to.

The door was opened again.

“Major Miles?” said Austin’s voice.

_Austin again?_ Zinnia thought.

“Yes?”

“You’re needed downstairs,” Austin said calmly.

“Ah,” Miles replied. “Very well, then.” There were some footsteps, not too far from where Zinnia was, concealed by the shelves. “I’ll be right back, General.”

Olivier scoffed.

“If you’d like to get started, I think I found it by the encyclopedias. It’s a blue volume.”

Then, Miles left.

And as Zinnia heard Olivier moving in the library, she realized what _was_ hiding there as well with the encyclopedias. Herself.

She immediately picked a book from the shelves, turned her back to the end of the corridor where Olivier would soon enough pop up from, and pretended to be lost between the pages.

Olivier’s breath hitched when she spotted Zinnia there. She couldn’t say she would have picked her out of a crowd, especially in these uniforms that _were_ the crowd, but she didn’t hesitate in ascertaining it was indeed her.

Either this was fate or she’d fallen asleep in the words she’d exited the office to read.

_I was wrong to think that a few days and some interactions would teach me what takes years and so many hardships to learn. That’s why now I am a quiet shadow in the brightest of valleys, because my assigned role here was to witness, never to join, and because for a moment maybe I made the mistake to think that wasn’t an important distinction. I’m not a part of the crowd, I’m not a soldier. But watching you be one makes me feel like perhaps being a shadow gifted me with eyes, and I don’t want to give those up now._

A crowd of dust and books, a shadow under the light.

And yet Olivier ignored everything else.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, tentative.

She wouldn’t presume to boast about knowing everyone’s schedules, but she was still somewhat shocked to have found the girl here. She always was, to see her outside of the kitchens or their room. Perhaps Olivier had lied to herself in making her brain believe the girl didn’t exist outside of those places. Something _else_ of the girl did exist in them, but it was a part of her Olivier herself had crafted trying to set fire to it and send the remaining ashes to oblivion.

Zinnia turned around slowly.

“I, uh…” And just like that Zinnia forgot why she was here.

_You,_ she would have said if she had been brave. _You asked me to come, and I came._

“What are _you_ doing here?” she managed to say a few seconds after.

“The major meant to show me some book,” Olivier said, realizing as she did that the book the girl was holding in her hands fit the description Miles had given her. She bit her lip. “In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it is that one.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Zinnia said, breaching the space between them in two quick steps. “Here, you can have it. I’m… done with it.”

_I wasn’t even reading it in the first place._

Fifty Recipes for the Common Rabbit, the title read.

Olivier couldn’t help but let out a tiny snort.

“Maybe not,” she said, giving it back. “We must have more than just one blue book.”

“You… sort them by color?”

“Of course not.”

“Then?”

Olivier sighed. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait, I’m…” And now Zinnia realized that it had all been a set up. Because otherwise Olivier would have brought it up already and wouldn’t have suggested Zinnia was doing something important she needed to be alone for.

She took the book anyway.

“How… how have you been?” Zinnia asked, because she hadn’t learned and she never would. What else did she have to lose except time? “Buccaneer’s been saying you look off all week.”

“That man…” Olivier sighed. “I’m fine. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Have you… arranged for my, uh, transfer?”

“I’ll have Austin or someone drive you when this stupid storm clears off…” she sounded really pissed off about the storm. Or, maybe, about the clearing of the storm.

_No, just the storm. No one could possibly get mad about a storm ending._

“Oh,” Zinnia said. “Thank you.”

“What brings you here?” Olivier asked her, casually leaning on a table nearby. And Zinnia cursed her entire existence for not knowing how to come up with a decent excuse on the spot. What was she supposed to say, ‘your subordinate is up to something, clearly’?

So she just shrugged. You couldn’t ever get it wrong with a shrug. Whatever emotion you were trying to convey would probably get lost in translation and the other person would just infer what they wanted from it.

“Just found this place on accident.”

“I should’ve shown you here before. I recall you like books?” If she was remembering correctly, between the scarce items in the list of things to retrieve from Iver, Zinnia had included books.

Zinnia smiled. “I like words in general.”

“So do I.”

“You do?” Zinnia squealed. “I mean, _of course you do._ ”

Somehow she’d managed to forget how Olivier had locked all her writings under seven keys and not one had ever been destroyed, at least not in her presence. That had to mean something.

“Not all words,” Olivier said. Which was pretty unlucky of her to claim, since previously she’d already fallen off the edge and said equally unfortunate things about _liking_ the girl’s writing. “Miles seems to be taking his sweet time, how would you feel about a tour?”

Another shrug. “Why not? I’ve nothing else to do.”

So Olivier left the table behind and they walked, slowly. Because, really, they were in no hurry. They had nothing else to do, nowhere else to be.

They walked past the same books, over and over. It was a small library, quaint and old and not that varied. Olivier pointed at books she’d read in her youth when she’d needed to get away from reality.

The Mermaid and the Fishermen. A Door to Nowhere. What Remains of Me. The titles piled up and Olivier forgot who she was talking to, who she was baring pieces of her last years of adolescence to. These were tales of fantasy and darkness, a reflection of her soul back then. Now, her own darkness surpassed any that Zinnia could find in these stories.

“All these books under one roof and you came all the way to Iver?” the girl commented, almost joking.

“What I need,” Olivier said, “is not here.”

_What I need doesn’t exist. And even if it did, I’d still need someone to decipher those books for me. I’d still need an alkahestry master to teach us._

“And what do you need, exactly?” Zinnia asked further. This was books, something safer than the past and simpler than intricate plans for the fort. If she played it right, it might lead to a conversation. A real one.

Of course, holding any expectations regarding this should’ve already alerted her of the idiocy of it.

“That’s not for you to know,” Olivier replied.

“It is, in a way. I tried to help you get it, didn’t I?”

Olivier turned around dramatically. The girl had, of course she had. But it was one thing to involve her in that little heist and another one entirely to divulge the entire plan to her right here, right now, hoping she’d never get caught up in any of it. She wouldn’t, she was leaving… but still… A civilian couldn’t ever know, especially not one that was soon to roam the country again. Anyone could find out. And if Mustang, of all people, found out, Olivier was ready to deny everything to his face. _Especially_ if he knew anything related to alkahestry in the end. She’d rather just fight the war the old-fashioned way than confide in him.

“Read anything you like for as long as you like,” she told Zinnia, “nobody will bother you here. But don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.”

“I never know what you can and can’t answer,” Zinnia said, a little defensively. Not even this had worked to get a conversation going, just like the last time. Did the general have to keep getting offended by her questions when she had no way to know which would be upsetting for her?

“You _know_ once I ask you to stop prying.”

Silence fell, and Zinnia let it stay. An order was an order, even if you weren’t contractually obligated to follow them.

And it was an unbearable thing to have sitting on your chest, this silence. Olivier couldn’t exactly walk away now, and she didn’t even want to. She just couldn’t speak about this as if it was common knowledge. She’d already told the name of it to the girl once, but not what she wanted it for. That was… classified.

“Miles must have been delayed on his way back,” she said after a while, when she couldn’t bear it anymore. The girl obviously wasn’t leaving any time soon, and she was supposed to wait for Miles here, but he was obviously _not_ returning any time soon. “It’s not like him to keep me waiting.”

Zinnia did her best at appearing serious and innocent since she was as guilty as Miles for orchestrating this, now that she suspected what was happening.

Olivier turned to meet the girl’s eyes.

“Are you hungry?” she said.

“Am I… hungry?” Zinnia repeated.

Her brain couldn’t find the logic that tied those two last sentences together. Miles and hunger? What did that have to do with anything? She couldn’t keep up.

“Yes,” Olivier said calmly. “It’s almost lunch time.”

Zinnia went red in the face. She’d read too many stories where this innocent little question about getting food led to places Zinnia wouldn’t even get to daydream about here.

“A little, yeah,” she said.

Olivier smiled one of those rare smiles that made her seem like a reflection, a ghost of her usual self. Some were gifted with the ability to see past that and understand that her emotions were just as human as everyone’s, only she’d pulled the brakes on some of them.

“So am I,” she said. “Shall we?”

Zinnia smiled back and almost asked what about Miles, but she let it go. Miles wasn’t coming back, Miles had absolutely nothing to do in this tiny library, Miles wouldn’t miss them. She let Olivier lead the way, and shook her head in private so she wouldn’t get caught being part of a scheme she wasn’t in on entirely. _Now all there’s left to do is find out what that man was thinking to have us both be in the same room for a while. It’s not like we’ve become best friends. It’s not like we’re even friends, per se._

Whatever the plan was, whatever its intentions, Zinnia didn’t pay much attention to any of it. She let the captain and the major subtly talk her into doing things, going places, and wait an extra five minutes in the kitchen. It wasn’t always them actually talking to her, but their words still hung there in the air, and she heeded them.

What else was there to do in a fort in the middle of a storm? Waiting, perhaps. And a runner like her had no heart for waiting.

But Olivier, who up until now had just focused on work and keeping her emotions at bay, didn’t remain as blind to this as everyone might’ve hoped. She noticed the groups of men gathering around her when she walked by, smiling at her as covertly as they could, given the circumstances.  She noticed the giggles and the overly friendly greetings, and she hated it. She hated every minute of it. She burned with the desire to punish Miles and Buccaneer for it, as she should have the first time.

Yet… every time _chance_ got her in the same room as Zinnia, Olivier stayed and calmed down and reminded herself that no one but her had real control over her life. She could always step out of wherever they were both nudged against each other, she could always be rude and unkind and return to her duties. She stayed because she wanted to.

Because, maybe, deep inside her she wondered what was truly going on and what could come out of this. At first, Olivier flinched at Zinnia’s ‘good morning’ and her shy smiles. It made her heart stop in her chest for a moment, and nothing that could make her feel like this should be allowed to stay. But with time, she just… relaxed at how common these occurrences were, at how soft the girl’s face was. Olivier liked to pretend she was objectively observing a reality. Studying something to better understand it.

And that was why she began to answer Zinnia’s questions without getting especially defensive. She had nothing to defend, nothing to lose, nothing to win. Just time in her hands and boredom and frustration to kill. Why not talk? Why not get to know her guest? Why not… let the general disappear for a moment or two? That part of her would always come back later, Olivier could afford to overlook it from time to time. She _wanted_ to overlook it, and she was the first one to be surprised by that.

Zinnia had experienced a bit of… cautionary worry about this. When her prying inquisitiveness had started to be treated kindly and rewarded with the information she’d been after, Zinnia had built up a wall in her heart. She’d expected the other shoe to drop immediately. And when it hadn’t, not once, she’d ended up asking more questions, talking more and more.

It was no easy thing, to grow closer to someone like Olivier. But… she thought she was doing something similar. Late at night, like never before, they even lay down for some minutes before sleep and just told stories. Old and new.

They both had pounding hearts in their chests, they both felt they wouldn’t be able to pull this off convincingly, and both of them thought the other was perfectly steady.

Nevertheless, in all her missing out on the obvious, Zinnia had learned that if she wanted this to go on without the active participation of Briggs’ worst gossips, she needed to stay up. Olivier came back to the room late, with very rare exceptions, and she’d always take a few minutes—sometimes even longer than an hour—to fall asleep.

So Zinnia took to staying up to wait for her, to make that time worthwhile. She didn’t care if it was midnight or three am. This was her calling the shots, sailing her own ship. She had control over what happened, between these four walls. And as much as her stomach churned because that control was still only one part of it, Zinnia loved that these moments being spontaneous meant that this was no longer just a plot from Miles and Buccaneer.

This was _real._

When the door opened one night, its familiar creek warned Zinnia that she should sit up on the bed and appear alert. Olivier walked in, looking like the storm outside their windows. Her hair wrapped around her neck almost like the coat she was wearing did, and her eyes… shone with stale light.

They met Zinnia’s with increasing ease.

“I hope you do know you’re under no obligation to wait for me every night,” Olivier said, softly. “I’m not going to forget where I’m supposed to be sleeping.”

She took off her coat in what seemed to be slow motion to Zinnia. She made it look easy. When Zinnia had to take any clothes off, she’d end up getting tangled in the sleeves. It was a spectacle. This, though, was a show you’d have to queue for hours to get in.

“I know—I just…” Zinnia said as Olivier forgot about room-sharing rules and began changing right in front of her. She looked away, to respect Olivier’s privacy and to protect her own sanity. “It’s less lonely this way.”

Olivier’s face showed a faint ghost of a lopsided grin.

“It’s not like I kiss you goodnight when I come in.”

They both blushed intensely at the implications of that being a reality. Zinnia hid in the covers a little bit more.

“No, you don’t,” she said, maybe wanting her to.

Maybe.

“Then it’s okay for you to go to bed when you want to,” Olivier said, getting comfortable on the floor. After so long, it no longer was as much of a terrible place to sleep on.

“Oh,” Zinnia said, “you’re assuming I don’t.”

“Guess there’s not much I can do about that, then.”

“Actually, yes,” Zinnia replied with a sly smile.

Olivier stared at her. “Enlighten me.”

“You could go to bed at a decent hour,” Zinnia said.

And Olivier… actually laughed.

Actual laughter. The real kind, the one that stops at nothing.

It wasn’t such a bad sound to fall asleep to. 

* * *

 

“Mornin’” they told her.

“Morning!” she’d reply. So many of them had started taking detours in the kitchens just to say hi. She’d gone from feeling like the last person on earth to practically being bombarded with niceness all day long. And Zinnia no longer knew if that was part of the scheme, or if she was hallucinating things.

When had this begun to happen? And did she want it to stop? At least she’d finally learned more names—slowly, and after screwing them up repeatedly over the days (she still called Austin ‘Dallas’, for some reason).

“You’re solicited lately,” Olivier commented.

She, too, had stopped communicating via growls most of the time. It was like… they’d both lost the more exterior part of their filters and now simply didn’t care too much about whatever they were doing. It was just a pastime.

One wasn’t supposed to put much thought into pastimes.

“I think they like me now because I helped clean the other day.”

“It’s not hard to like you. You’re efficient.”

“Oh.” Zinnia blushed without being able to spot it happening. _Efficient, she thinks I’m efficient._ If anyone had read into her mind then, they would only have heard giggling. It only lasted for a second, though, she soon composed herself. “Well, not everyone thinks that. Back with my parents, I was never enough.” She smiled. “And they, too, despised my cooking.” She made an adorable wrinkly face when she realized how much of a lie that was. “Not my dad, though. He’s always content with everything.”

“And your mother?”

And Zinnia believed this was the first question Olivier had ever asked her. The first personal question, and it had to be about something so… unpleasant, something that made her stomach forget it had been hungry two seconds ago.

“She’s more of a sculptor than a mother,” Zinnia said, laughing to conceal the awkwardness. “It’s the price to pay for being an only child, parents might want to turn you into better versions of them, and since they’ve no one else to focus that effort on, it falls on you. I don’t know if you have any siblings, but yeah…”

“I do. Four of them.”

“Wow…”

“But still… I can relate to dubious mother figures.”

Olivier took a sip from her drink.

Zinnia went for it. _Fuck it_. _She’s a wall, she’ll stop me if she wants to._

“What’s your mother like?” Her entire chest surged with nerves at having asked that. She shouldn’t have, she should’ve shut up and just kept on talking about her own life. Zinnia had no business in Olivier’s past and story.

Olivier, on the other hand, sat back on her chair and thought of a way to put it that wouldn’t sound inconsiderate. Which it would still be.

“Old-fashioned.” And yes, Olivier thought, that was probably the best way to describe her. From head to toe, Gwendolyn Armstrong oozed the air of past centuries, not her own. If she and Olivier stood side by side, nobody would say they belonged in the same history period, even if they did resemble each other. Olivier had her mother’s eyes. Cold and hard as diamond, her father’s downfall, once. Now a wall of ice that stood between two warring countries.

And, almost moved by the memories themselves, Olivier started talking.

“Quite like your own, in fact.”

“Is it any different, being a sister instead of just a daughter?”

Olivier laughed softly, softer than before. “Not much.” She sighed. “I was the family project. Put this on, behave this way, read this and not that, attend this party, look for a husband—” Olivier chuckled to herself. _As if._ “My mother planned to have me inherit. I was eldest, after all.” Zinnia couldn’t help but notice that ‘was’. “But she didn’t wait too long after I left to name Alex the next Armstrong heir.”

Zinnia leaned on her open palm, elbow on the table. She’d forgotten all about the food, and the conversations around her. All of her mind was focusing on this one story, this one woman, and one word of it at a time.

“Shit, and I thought _my_ mother was bad.”

“It’s not a competition. And, in my case, it ceased mattering a long time ago. I’m not just a descendant of a rich family, I have a country to protect.”

“So,” Zinnia asked, interested, and more than just the story but her own, the details of it that matched, “it gets easier.”

“You’re an adult, you should know the answer to that already.”

Zinnia looked down. “Why’d you think I left?”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t getting any easier.”

“And has it, far away from there?”

Zinnia laughed. “No.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” Olivier said. “It doesn’t really matter if it gets easier, it’s still going to be there. Either if it’s just for a day a year or every morning when you remember it. Accept it and move on. I’m sure you have bigger things to worry about.”

“Starting a war?”

“Eating your food,” Olivier pointed out. “This isn’t your war.”

“It’s no one’s war. It’s not even a war yet. How can you be so sure it will be one day?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Up until now you’ve let me. Or should I interpret this to be one of those ‘stop prying’ moments?”

Olivier looked her in the eye.

“What I know is that it’s always been a war. Just because there’s no enemy fire for a while doesn’t mean they’re not plotting to resume it anytime soon. And it is _my_ war. It’s always been my war…”

And a war much bigger than the one waiting to be waged against Drachma, too.

The day progressed in the usual direction, Olivier went to hide in her office and Zinnia visited the library again. It was a quiet place to write, and she had plenty to pour on the page. They might’ve crossed each other when Zinnia was coming up from an early dinner and her pockets crammed with new writings she was especially proud of in their subtleness and style, but they didn’t mention anything related to personal life until later, when Olivier walked in, too done to stay up honing a headache.

“Long day?”

“Long life,” Olivier replied. She settled into the routine of removing layers and adding new ones, then preparing the mat for the floor. She’d stopped caring about baring skin, she’d stopped believing there were any prying eyes in the room with her.

She turned off the light before she got under the covers. She always made sure to hobble the thinnest blankest out of the few she owned, and she was certain the flower girl had no idea. Stubborn as she was, Zinnia would have argued.

Then—

“Does your mum dress like women did some years ago?” Zinnia asked in a small voice, as if she felt ashamed of the question.

It was a perfectly good one. Perfectly safe, too.

So Olivier told her, softly, about many-layered skirts and corsets and the closets her mother had, filled with enough fabric to wrap around a whale. Olivier told Zinnia about the clothes her mother would use for different occasions, as well, and what the criteria had been for choosing an outfit. They weren’t fond memories, but Olivier was glad she still had them, if only to share them with someone as something curious, not punishing.

Zinnia was kicking her feet up in the air at this point, unable to contain her giggles. They sprouted out of her like pollen and she let them. She made it seem easy.

“How _many_ changes of clothes?”

“Three a day,” Olivier answered. “More, if there were any special events.”

Gowns so delicate understanding their structure would take too long. Olivier had never managed to learn how to properly put them on, she’d seen no practical application for it. She’d never have to dress herself in one of those horrid things, and… she’d doubted that in the unlikely case she was to undress a woman in such clothing she couldn’t just rip it off.

“I’m struggling really hard not to imagine you in one of those ugly gowns right now.” Zinnia kept laughing like this was the best story in the world to her, and Olivier managed a quick smile as well. A passing thought came to her to tell the flower girl about the arguments with her mother about those dresses Olivier never even considered wearing, but she chose to let that go and continue this beautiful notion of camaraderie that had been born out of something so trivial. 

“And that’s because you haven’t seen the shoes.”

“Oh god, shoes?” Zinnia squealed. “What kind of shoes?”

“Have you ever seen catalogs from a couple of decades ago?”

“Probably, but I don’t remember. I’m not big on them.”

“They’re useless, small, and too thin to be comfortable,” Olivier explained, gladly. All of this was so… new to her. The anecdote wasn’t even funny to her, but she wasn’t the most knowledgeable person in matters of humor. “And they have more laces than you can imagine. But you should see the accessories.”

Zinnia imagined Olivier in full attire and, even in almost complete darkness, had to face the wall in order not to look like a giggling mess, which she was not exempt from resembling anyway. Olivier didn’t mind, it was almost forcing her to smile as well too.

“What?”

“N-nothing…” Zinnia kept hiding behind her hands. “I just…” Her voice was still drowned by laughter. It was the most beautiful thing Olivier had ever been witness to, sunrise from the top of the wall included. “I just feel so _lucky_ I never had to deal with any of that.”

Olivier chuckled softly, as if to pretend she wasn’t. “Neither did I.”

“Saved by the uniform,” Zinnia managed to say in her most serious tone, only to disappear into another cloud of hiccuppy giggles.

“You were saved by butcher’s blood. That’s not the climax of excuses, either.”

_She remembers?_ Zinnia thought. Sometimes she mentioned her parents’ business, but not often, and she didn’t think she must’ve told Olivier more than one or twice. _She remembers…_

She blushed like a little girl and said:

“Shut up. None of my dresses ever had any blood on them.”

“You never wear them now,” Olivier said. And it was only now that she realized just how very specific this was. It meant she’d paid attention, and she didn’t want to look like she was actively doing that. No matter how little her pride mattered now, some things should still remain neutral. This felt, to her, like trespassing.

Zinnia finally calmed down enough to lay on her back on the bed.

“I’d clash with the place,” she said, still al little breathless.

“Maybe you’d brighten it.”

Zinnia snorted at the idea. She certainly had yellow enough dresses to almost shine. She would walk among them and their faces would turn to look at her, calling attention to herself like she didn’t care. And maybe she didn’t. Now, at least, Zinnia was forgetting that her days here were numbered and that one of those little details of a life mattered—or should have mattered—to her. In her heart, she’d forgotten all about leaving. This moment in the dark had brought an old flame back to life.

“I’d be wearing a target on my face,” she said, in the end. However amusing the fantasy was, she’d never brave up walking around in a silly dress. Not now. “And I like your soldiers’ friendly greetings more than I can say. I’m not ready to give that up just yet.”

Olivier sighed. _Soon you will, anyway. Soon you’ll give all of this up._

Even if Olivier had the power to change that, to impose her will over everyone else’s like many did in her position, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself to, she always backed down from the notion when it came to tethering Zinnia to the fort. She couldn’t fail this promise she had made. When the last clouds receded, Olivier would provide a car and a driver. Because she couldn’t have a selfish say on this, it wasn’t any of her business. If the flower girl wanted to leave, that want would be honored as a last gift. As a first one.

_She took in the sight of the small room with flower paintings on its walls, because she knew it was the last time she’d be here. Olivier sat on the bed as Ianthe looked for something she’d been meaning to show her (some new type of seed, perhaps.)_

_“My train leaves in a few hours,” Olivier mumbled. She couldn’t say she ever spoke in such a tone. She’d been trained for silence and compliance where it was asked of her, but this was a place for freedom, not subjugation._

_She wasn’t too sure Ianthe had heard her. She just kept rummaging in her desk and drawers._

_“That’s okay, I’ve most of my stuff ready,” Ianthe said without turning around, probably proud of her preemptive packing. “I can’t take my plants with me but—“ Ianthe smiled mournfully over her shoulder. Her eyes held so much love in them that Olivier couldn’t help but let guilt trap her in them for just a little longer. “—there’s still trees up north, right?”_

_Trees, and snow, and dirt. Men and gunpowder. A chaos that now bore her name._

_“You can’t come with me,” Olivier finally said, voice a little firmer. A little more self-assured than before. She wasn’t asking for permission, she was putting an end to things._

_“And why not, huh? It’s a free country.” Ianthe said, still not keeping up, still caught in her quest for her seeds._

_Now Olivier had to lie. Lie like a ruler and lie for the wellbeing of this small hurricane. She had to say words that never in her life she would have even considered. Ianthe held love in her eyes, Olivier did so in the space between her words and her actions. Over the months, Ianthe had been able to pinpoint the exact balance out of those two that made for honest displays of love. But, for this, Olivier had had to learn to neutralize one of the two. Her words shooed Ianthe away, her body still welcomed her in and would never let her go. She’d had to freeze her body up in stiffness that wouldn’t really leave her after this day._

_“You’ll be a nuisance,” Olivier finally said. Something broke inside her when those words made it out of her. “I can’t keep this up and hope to be someone in the military.”_

_“As if they’d let you be.” Olivier had told Ianthe the truth about the academy, about those men who feared anything that wasn’t like them. But she’d ceased to be so honest about the reason why she was being sent so far away—to a battlefield._

_Olivier couldn’t arrive to the border with Drachma hand-in-hand with a girl. Civilians weren’t even allowed on the fort._

_Ianthe stopped to look at Olivier. She walked closer to her, a calm expression on her face, and tried to take her hands in her own._ Of course, _Olivier thought,_ she has to at least try to touch me into staying.

_It wouldn’t work this time. It couldn’t._

_“I’m not kidding,” Olivier said, pushing her hands away, gently. Deep inside, it hurt like nothing else before. But this was the choice she’d made, the right choice._ I’ve sworn to protect this country, and you’re the most important person on it. I can’t let you face war for me. _“You can’t come.”_

_Ianthe now seemed to realize the seriousness of it. Her eyes were watery and her nose a little smaller than usual, as if she was holding in air. She was obviously about to cry, but she didn’t. Olivier knew she wouldn’t. She was too proud for that._

_“So this is the true you…”_

_“Yes,” Olivier lied again._

_“Just another power-hungry soldier,” Ianthe spat, walking backwards away from her, face contorted into a grimace of wrath. She was no longer seeing her girlfriend sitting there on her bed, making small mistakes. She was seeing the enemy._

_Olivier held her glare as well as she could, having learned well to fear and respect that wrath. But her own eyes didn’t carry a declaration of war, just a longing she had no name for. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”_

_“Well, now your conscience’s clear. Get the hell out of my house!”_

_Ianthe’s mum called from her living room, “Honey, is everything okay?”_

_“Yeah, don’t worry.” Ianthe looked at Olivier again in a way that admitted no reply whatsoever and growled between her teeth: “Get out.”_

_And Olivier did. She couldn’t help, once the door had been slammed behind her, but looking at the house she’d spent such beautiful times at. The magnolia tree under which life had seemed sweeter, somehow. The bed where Olivier had forgotten about her inadequacy everywhere else she went. The family she’d found that had nothing to do with her own, that had welcomed her in as if she was_ their _own._

_And none of that would be hers from now on. Ice, snow, steel, and concrete would replace it._

_She returned to her quarters at the academy to fetch the few things she was taking with her, then headed for the train station. The few strange looks she got because of the sword her father had given her barely days ago, when he’d heard of the news, distracted her from reality. For a moment, she almost felt as if nothing had changed and in a while she could take off all her armor of hate and frustration and be young and careless again in the arms of a botanist._

You could still turn around…

_She still had time until the train departed. She could perfectly well head back to the house and tell Ianthe that nothing she’d inferred from that conversation was true. But then… Ianthe wouldn’t be able to dissuade Olivier from accompanying her all the way to the north. To the war, to the most solitary, harshest place in the country._

_Olivier didn’t have the heart to be selfish and root for love when that love could so easily be destroyed by horrors Ianthe hadn’t even heard about._

_She’d be marching right into the trenches, and doing so hand-in-hand with a soldier didn’t guarantee any rates of survival._

_The station was buoyant with activity. This wasn’t called Grand Central for nothing_ _. More trains left every day from these platforms than people lived in the small towns surrounding Central City. Olivier found a less transited spot to sit in while she waited._

_She was expected in Fort Briggs in about eight hours, with nightfall. Her train would surely be crowded with more soldiers, all sent north to atone for something their superiors hadn’t agreed with. And she only began to fathom the true number of troops that were to meet her same fate as the departing time neared and the platform she was on began to fill with blue uniforms. Some faces, she already knew; some she would get to know in time._

_Then, in the chaos of bags and soldiers and loved ones, Olivier saw something that didn’t make her wish she could send them all away and board the train alone._

_A loved one._

_Ianthe._

Olivier had even allowed herself one tiny smile that day. Because it had always been a lovable trait in her girlfriend, that uncanny ability to be petty, so petty sometimes it made Olivier laugh. Of course Ianthe had come all that way, after having slammed the door shut right in Olivier’s face, just to make it clear who had the last word.

_When you’re looking for something to place the blame on, remember that it was your ambition that did this,_ Ianthe had said to her that day on the station.

_Not my ambition,_ Olivier thought now, facing a very different woman in a very differing setting. _Not my ambition, Ianthe… My cowardice._

Their relationship wouldn’t have survived the first two months on Briggs grounds. Ianthe might have been brought down by enemy fire, found out and deported, kidnapped and executed.

_My cowardice… and my desire to protect you. Sometimes they are the same thing._

How quaint, how little things had changed. Wasn’t Olivier being that same young coward right now, years after she’d won wars and commanded entire battalions of men, all in the name of protecting someone?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what I'm most proud of in this chapter, the Austin-Dallas joke, the fact that I chose a pretty cool name for Olivier's mum, or my naming Central's station after New York City's XD
> 
> (in fact I think it's the flashback at the station as a whole, I was so looking forward to _reading_ that one ^^)


	28. Clear skies

The best things in life tended to be the ones you took for granted and only ever realized how much they meant to you after you were denied access to them.

For a few days, Zinnia had stopped looking out of the window and instead had begun looking _in._ Somehow there had ceased to be a line separating the parts of the day she shouldered on through and the ones she awaited.

Maybe doing dishes wasn’t her favorite part of the day, though. But Buccaneer had a gift for making everything either three times as unbearable or a little bit less hard on one’s body.

She attributed this sudden lack of anguish to her return to writing. The words had taken over for everything she’d kept inside her before, and she felt she actually had less things to worry about. It was like… they had been channeled away from her.

And she wasn’t complaining.

That morning, when she was going to Buccaneer’s department for another few long hours of mostly inactivity and gossip, she noticed the board was adorned once again with the huge schedule for the patrols for this week.

That could only mean one thing: the storm was over.

She walked closer to the noticeboard to see when it was her turn to pitch in, and to her surprise she found out that her name was in neither of the many occupied slots.

Either Miles had made a mistake or…

“Hey, kid,” Buccaneer’s voice called, a few steps away. He walked closer to her. “Boss is waiting for you.”

“Did she say why?”

Buccaneer shrugged.

“No idea, but hurry it the hell up, I mean to get started on a more decent map today.”

Zinnia just stood there. She was really going to leave this time. She had asked for transport, she had asked for permission. And she was being granted all of that now.

But… why did she feel so breathless at the thought of it being real? This storm had lasted long, but not long enough. She’d expected it to rain and blow heavy for some more days. Always some more days, never a specific number.

She _had_ wanted to leave.

Buccaneer rolled his eyes. “Well? Do you need me to come with you or what?”

“No, I just—”

“Too late, I’m going with ya now.”

“Ooookay,” she mumbled. “But I thought you were busy with that map.”

“ _We_ are,” he grumbled.

Buccaneer still had hopes that his plan had worked and this was that moment in which everything changed and his boss declared her undying love for this scrawny woman with her head in the clouds. It was so improper of the setting, and yet he didn’t hesitate about it once. He hadn’t noticed the clear skies today, either. Nor the schedules lacking one name.

Zinnia’s entire being shook in painful anticipation. She kept telling herself that _maybe_ Olivier had forgotten, and that this little meeting had nothing to do with transport. Maybe she wanted to keep training her. Maybe she wanted to talk about dresses again.

_Or maybe she’s just doing her job, putting you on a truck to take you far away._

And she hadn’t even packed. She’d been so preoccupied lately with the development of things and how nice the fort seemed when people weren’t blaming her for some thing or the other, even in such a storm, that she hadn’t actually worried about getting her things ready. She would have to give her uniforms back, she’d have to retrieve materials from Buccaneer’s desk.

Zinnia gulped audibly.

Leaving would take all day. And it would hurt for even longer.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Buccaneer pointed out.

“It’s cold.” Zinnia shrugged.

“You’re still afraid of her?” Buccaneer laughed.

“I’m not afraid!” she said, her pitch too high, giving her away for entirely the most different reason of all.

“Right…” he side-eyed her and smirked. “Maybe she wants to give your project the green light.”

“Since when has it been _my_ project?”

“Since now that you gotta defend it to her,” he said with a huge grin on his face as he pushed the door open for Zinnia. “Off you go.”

Zinnia walked into the office as if this was the very first time she was seeing it. She hoped Buccaneer was right. She could at least pull off a half-decent argument in favor of a new route, the one she’d drawn, but she could never—in her life—stand there as what she’d once wanted became something she had to do in order not to disrespect the woman who had housed her and made this possible.

Miles sat there in his usual non-involvement with whatever Olivier chose to bring into her office, holding all the truths in his capable hands. If only Zinnia could just ask him for help now. She didn’t need him to be her eyes or ears, she just needed his voice. Her own wouldn’t be enough.

“Your car has arrived,” Olivier announced without preambles. She had bags under her blotchy eyes, and Zinnia would have bet money that she hadn’t slept much that night. Or she might have cried herself to sleep, which Zinnia doubted very much. She had seen Olivier stay up on repeated occasions, and she always woke up with a face so very similar to the one she was sporting now.

“Oh…”

She couldn’t say this was unexpected, but she’d still wanted to think about everything but this. It was so soon, too soon.

“North City sent a driver as well. He’s waiting for you outside the main gate. I suggest not making him wait too long.”

“I… um… I hadn’t actually…” Zinnia shook her head and took a deep breath. She had to get her thoughts straightened up in her head to be able to speak like a normal person. “I haven’t made arrangements yet about… my housing situation.”

“And what the hell were you waiting for?” Olivier told her off.

“I just need to make a few phone calls.”

If she could remember the number of the library Candie used to call for the book orders, then maybe they’d be able to contact Candie herself. If Miles had been right and all Iver inhabitants moved to North City in the winter, it would only be a matter of making the right calls.

Olivier pushed her phone closer to Zinnia instead of answering.

“Major, tell the driver to get a coffee as he waits. It might be a while.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, immediately getting up. He succinctly grabbed Buccaneer by the arm and dragged him away from the door where he’d been standing, sensing that the captain wanted to eavesdrop on that conversation Miles himself had been sent away from. Nobody liked Briggs’ coffee, and the driver was probably already lounging somewhere, aware that these things took time.

Zinnia’s shaky hands needed a few tries to recall the number, but once she did, everything came back to her and she was able to talk to the person on the other side of the line without letting it show she was at a loss. She’d asked to leave but she’d never planned what she would do once she could, and now when she got on that car and arrived to North City, she’d have nowhere to go. And it would still be cold there.

After a couple of minutes, she was given Candie’s second residence’s phone number, and a weight lifted off her chest. Candie wouldn’t bail out on her. She never had. She probably had spent these past many weeks wondering where Zinnia had gone.

“Who’s this?” the familiar voice of Candie said over the phone.

She could _cry_ from joy if she wasn’t in public.

“It’s… Zinnia. From Iver.”

Candie actually squealed.

“Oh my god, child, where have you _been_? I didn’t see you after moving out of town, I was starting to get a little worried.”

Zinnia chose to overlook the fact that she’d known nothing about the town’s tradition of moving out and focused on what she needed now. There would be an entire winter to tell her the story of Briggs and ask her to please keep her updated on more traditions like this one.

“I’m okay,” she said. She didn’t mention Briggs now, though, she was sure Candie would have loved that, but she wasn’t in the mood for teasing right now. And not in this office, either. “I’m heading to North City, and I was wondering if I could stay with you for a few days till I find somewhere else.”

“Zinnia, you silly woman, you can stay for as long as you want,” Candie said. “Besides, we have to catch up.”

“Okay, thank you so, so much. You don’t know how much this means to me, I will make it up to you as soon as I can and—”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Candie said. “When are you getting here?”

“Probably in a few hours.” Probably less, since there was already a car waiting. Zinnia should have felt important that an entire vehicle had been rented for her, but all she felt like was a disaster.

“Okay, then I’ll give you an address so you can just come straight here.”

“Thank you,” Zinnia said a second time. She felt a great surge of tears coming and she only hoped she’d make it out of this room in time so no one saw her cry. And not precisely of joy now.

She hung up the phone right after noting down the address.

“Well?” Olivier asked.

“My old boss will take me in.”

“Wonderful.” It was uttered so dully that Zinnia waited a few seconds, unsure of what should technically follow this exchange, and then just opted for standing up.

She was _leaving._ They had… grown to be quite civil with each other, with time. Would Olivier really mean for it to end like this? Would Zinnia allow it?

She had all the power now, the last word. Hadn’t she always wanted it?

So she looked down at the face she’d seen asleep, angry, happy, and tired. The face she’d dreamed about and daydreamed about and tried to erase from her brain because none of this made sense.

And Olivier didn’t pretend that this display of eye contact wasn’t happening. She stared back. 

* * *

 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Miles whispered to Buccaneer, who presently had an ear against the closed door, trying to hear what was going on. “Do you want to be imprisoned?”

“Shut up, I can’t hear…”

“ _That’s because you shouldn’t!_ ”

Buccaneer unglued his ear momentarily from the door.

“Oh, shut up, Miles, you want to hear this more than me.”

His face shifted all of a sudden. He slammed his metal arm on Miles’s chest.

“She’s leaving.”

“What?”

“She really is.” Buccaneer’s face was alarmed.

“It didn’t work, then.” Miles sounded affected, but not too much. 

* * *

 

Blue. That was what Zinnia would take away from these few seconds. So much blue. She could build a house of it, hide inside so no one would ever dare move her from that spot. In her dreams, it was hers. In reality, it belonged to no one, and wanting it only made it harder for her to enjoy.

So many days here, chasing that blue, living in its shadow. It all came down to this one moment. And how intensely Zinnia hoped she could make it last forever.

Neither of them looked away. For some reason or another, they didn’t want to, and they didn’t think. This was the last self-indulgence, the last stupid joke and the last personal question with no real answer.

_I lived in a military fort for so long I’d forgotten I myself was only a civilian. I saw that truth in the general’s eyes. And I knew I would never be welcome here, not the way I want to be,_ Zinnia wanted to write. But right now she could only block those words, let them come back to her later when she was alone. Truly alone, for the first time in a long time.

Alone in a city she didn’t know, alone in the winter.

_Winter… She never showed me, the winter from the top of the wall._

Olivier, in the end, offered her a hand to shake. She didn’t like goodbyes, yet this time she had no choice but to honor it, for it partly was her fault it was taking place.

Zinnia took that hand in hers, unable to look away. Not yet. Soon but not yet.

“So, I guess this is it, then…” she mumbled.

“Yes,” Olivier just said. She pulled her hand away. Zinnia almost asked to hold it again. Almost. “Goodbye.”

Zinnia nodded and stared into those blue eyes for just one moment longer. Then she walked out of the room. She smiled sadly at Miles and Buccaneer. Despite herself, she would miss them. She would miss this.

But she wasn’t allowed to stay here anymore.

It was only when she was on her way to the room to fetch her clothes that she realized she hadn’t reciprocated that farewell. Out of fear, out of an inexplicable desire to somehow nullify it, but she hadn’t. And now she never would be able to.

A single tear fell from her eyes.

_Goodbye…_  

* * *

 

Both men barged in Olivier’s office like the world was ending, like Drachma had just broken their truce and was marching towards the fort. Their urgency scared her at first, then she saw it in their faces. And she knew every single pretense she had clung to in the past few days had just evaporated.

This was reality knocking on her open door.

"General, you really won’t… do anything?" Buccaneer asked softly. “It’s not too late yet.”

But it was. It was most likely that the girl would already be getting her few scant things, and how long did it take to go down the stairs? How long did it take to get into a car and drive away?

Olivier refused to look out of the window, regardless of how she sched to do that very thing and confirm her suspicions were right.

"What do you suggest I do? Chase her down?”

“YES!” Buccaneer almost yelled.

Miles elbowed him to shut him up and stepped forward to speak up himself.

When it mattered the most, he didn’t fear a prison cell or losing his job. When it mattered the most, he knew what lines to cross and how to cross them. Sometimes, although he’d never admit it to Buccaneer, one just had to meddle.

And this was his intervention, for better or worse.

"Olivier...” he said. “You know what you should do. Do it. "

"You dare giving me an order, Miles?” she replied, voice barely on the brink of normalcy. Olivier was tired and walking towards her own defeat, dragging her feet on the ground. Why did she have to keep on stretching this? The girl was lost to her already, she had been so from the moment she had asked to be let out, and Olivier had made her choice. For once, losing hadn’t felt like dishonor to her, but rather the right thing to do.

"No. But …” Miles sighed. He didn’t have the slightest clue how to word this quickly in a way that made sense, in a way she would feel compelled to listen to. “You will regret not stopping her.”

And she deflated, visibly, in front of him and Buccaneer.

She turned to finally take a peek at the world beneath the window. She saw the car, still not moving. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably. _She still hasn’t gotten on it._

A ticking clock, this heart of hers would be.

If she acted soon, she could still stop this. She had been wanting to for so, so very long, refusing to because it wasn’t fair. But life wasn’t fair. This fort didn’t play by those rules.

_Here at Briggs only the strong survive._ And she had ‘strong’ literally embedded into her name.

Heart hammering against her ribs, emotions whirl-pooling in her brain, she _listened._

_You will regret not stopping her_ , Miles had said.

_I regret not having stopped her already._

“To your posts,” she said as she pushed through them, already running. “Don’t wait for me.”

Indeed, in a way, a war was being waged. Not against Drachma, but perhaps this would be a harder defeat to process.

A wall doesn’t move at its own convenience, its duty is to stand its ground, but Olivier dashed through the corridors and past the stairs as if she was the last woman standing who could put out a terrible fire.

Packing took time, the flower girl must still have been in the room. In their room. She had to make it there _now._ She was already breathless and panting and doubting nothing in the world, because she _had_ to do this, and she _knew_ this was it. She would be tearing down every single wall she had built around her to remain strong, to remain neutral.

She would have to confess the truth.

But when she finally got the door open, the room was empty. And the desk was empty once again, a barren image for her barren life.

_I’m too late,_ she realized. _I’m late for the one thing that mattered._

She had already begun dragging herself back to the office when she rebelled.

She still had to try. She had to run after that car in the snow, she had to get it to stop. And she would not _quit this_ until the engines had been shut down.

She grabbed the rusty handrail and rushed down the stairs. Only one thing mattered. Only one name. Olivier shouted it—she’d always been so good at shouting—because at this point she didn’t care. All that time repressing it and now it all came powering through her, past her, into the world.

_And so the wall ceases to look so vast and impregnable._

She slammed her shoulder against the corner of the corridors she ran past. She ignored the soldiers she saw around. She had nothing but this chance. She wouldn’t stop. She _couldn’t_ stop.

Despite her burning heart and aching limbs, despite the feeling that she’d never make it and that she’d been a fool to think she could outrun her own feelings, Olivier didn’t stop.

The floors flew by. All those many floors, and her legs hurt more and more. She could trip, now. And it would be game over.

Game over before it even started. Game over before she’d even admitted she was playing it.

Two more floors and she’d reach the ground floor, then risk it all in one final sprint to the car. She focused on that and ran faster.

And then she ran _into_ something solid. Something that screamed.

Olivier almost fell; a hand that locked around her right wrist kept her standing. And she knew the touch of that skin.

Blue met brown for the second time that day.

She’d made it.

Blue and brown… Colors on opposite sides of things, colors that might blend and might somehow fit into the same portrait, but they would never be one and the same.

And yet, opposites sometimes collaborated. Winter and summer, and their offspring spring and autumn, the perfect balance of the two, either on one side of the spectrum of cold and warm.

No words were uttered. One glance that lasted ages was enough to communicate everything. All the remarks they’d bitten out of their mouths, all of those hidden looks neither had known how to interpret, that day on the floor of the gymnasium, the first blooms of spring they had enjoyed together, both in either side of the season and what it offered. Always in opposing teams, always competing over the empty space separating them.

Slowly, Olivier lifted her right hand, unable to look away, unable to breathe or think or analyze anything. She cupped Zinnia’s small face. Her jaw was so smooth and soft at touch, and her eyes… they drew her right in.

And who was Olivier to even dare try and avoid the calling of something that powerful?

She bent her neck down and she kissed her.

Olivier just kissed her. She found the girl’s waist with her other hand and gently pushed her against the nearest wall. _Don’t leave_ , her touch whispered, sad, on Zinnia’s skin. _Don’t leave me._

And Zinnia understood.

_I never wanted to,_ she thought. But there wasn’t even room for thought. She felt she had been taken out of her body and was finally allowed to experience the whole world just by existing.

She existed to be held in the arms of this one woman.

Right now there were no labels. Zinnia was neither a civilian nor just a woman, and Olivier was no longer just a general and a soldier. Right now, there were only two women.

And when they separated and took the first full breath in a while, Zinnia _remembered_. Why she was here, what she was doing, and what she was running from.

No more.

“Why would you get me a way out if you didn’t want me to leave?” she muttered, both confused and delighted. Dazed. If she was walking in a dream, she didn’t want to ever wake up again. Not now, not ever. Some dreams were worth getting lost in.

“It wasn’t my choice to make.”

“I think you just made it anyway, general,” Zinnia mumbled, slowly raising herself up on her toes to put her lips on hers once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drops mic*


	29. At long, long last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

“Olivier. Call me Olivier.”

Zinnia didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She was glued to the dream she’d had since that day she’d walked past the river into this strange land full of even stranger people. And this wasn’t inside her head, only real when she was looking right at it and fog the second she turned away. This remained alive and out of her control even if her attention decided to drift somewhere else.

_I’m kissing her._

_She’s kissing me._

At first it was barely like acknowledging the elephant in the room, timidly petting its forehead with trembling fingers in case it wanted to stomp away in two trots.

Zinnia had her back against the wall and yet she’d never felt freer. Two wings wouldn’t have made her feel like she was floating more realistically than this. Two pairs of lips and a wall. And hands that never knew where to go.

Olivier’s hips pushed her against that solid vertical surface, her hair getting caught in the way, and Zinnia didn’t once think of moving away. A wall was fine, this place was fine. She could have been in the middle of a storm like the one they’d just lived through, and she wouldn’t have moved a inch. Something warm and heavy pulsed within her, and each pulsation was a blessing, a reminder. No dream would have managed to interweave detail into that feeling so accurately.

Zinnia’s chest heaved with air and emotion that filled cavities in her she didn’t know existed. This couldn’t be a dream or a fantasy or a mistake. None of those would ever replicate her breathing to that extent.

_A woman and a soldier…_ she thought, finally daring to bring her hands up, tangling them in the mane of blond hair that tempted her—that had been tempting her since day one under the sun.

Olivier responded the same way, remembering she had hands, remembering the very daydreams she’d lost sleep for and how acutely the illusion of them had hurt for days and weeks and months. She remembered that day in the gymnasium where the simplest of touches, a corrective one, had sent shivers down her spine and thighs and made her spiral harder than any other time before.

She held Zinnia’s small frame in her arms, put her hands on the hips she hadn’t thought of touching in too long, and just let go. This wasn’t a playground, she wasn’t fifteen, and … she needed this. More than words could ever say.

It elicited a curious little sound from the girl—a sound coming from someone who was free, who didn’t have to bite her lip anymore and who now couldn’t. Because the two of them were intertwined in this intermittent form of a kiss that was no more just a piece of molten iron but the fire that melts it instead.

Soon, it ceased to be an intermittent kiss, all carefulness and caution and a little bit of fear.

_A woman and a soldier…_ Zinnia thought again, vaguely, like a faint memory in the back of her head. Was she the woman? Was she a soldier now? Had she fallen in? Would she ever want back out again?

Between a woman and a wall, would Zinnia ever want to leave?

Her hands, wiser than she was, wanted to return the favor of those palms at her hips. She found the hem of Olivier’s blue—ever so blue, delightfully blue—jacket and didn’t hesitate. Her fingers slithered under it, up, all the way up, at either side of her.

_Two women._

“Fuck…” Olivier muttered mid-kiss.

“Nice word choice,” Zinnia whispered back, pulling her back in, tugging at that neck to bend down so she could reach. Their breaths overpowered them at this point. Any little pause in their motion was enough to take some air in, and it would last a lifetime.

When Zinnia’s fingers reached her chest, Olivier’s breath hitched between her lips, and her hands crisped on Zinnia’s hips. It was one thing to close your eyes in a shower and pretend the falling drops were company, and another one entirely to be here right now, after so many years of dryness, sharing a room with a waterfall.

Zinnia took advantage of this moment of weakness. Such a forbidden concept here on Briggs, yet useful. So very useful. She maneuvered Olivier away from that wall into a vacant room. Her hands would not move any further up in that corridor, not when anyone might come in and see. No one could see, no one could ever know just how far into the fort weakness had managed to trespass.

In the momentary pause between opening and closing the door once inside, they looked each other in the eye. A question that danced in midair.

“Now, what?” Zinnia finally asked it, panting a little now that she could. She didn’t know how this had happened, and she wouldn’t ask any other questions but this one. Now, what? What was about to happen? What did she want to happen?

Olivier made sure the door was locked before replying, breathy and… almost a different person in the dimness of this room. All the worry had disappeared from her face, and she seemed as carefree and young as she’d never truly been. Zinnia thought it was the light, and she didn’t really have much time to think or do any more.

The mountain came at her, the mountain at the border who hadn’t seen rain in decades, who hadn’t drunk in fifteen years. A solitary mountain meeting a slippery river.

And the river came to meet it, it leapt out of the floor to. Zinnia stood on tiptoe and did it gladly. She would have done anything to preserve the feeling of those lips on her own, the warmth of that body against hers. She never wanted it to end, she would have risked anything to have it again, to feel it again. And it hadn’t even ended yet. This was nostalgia for a memory that wasn’t yet fully formed.

They tangled around each other, and Zinnia walked backwards, moved by that glorious restless mountain, until she hit a chair and a table instead of a new, safer wall. And Zinnia sat down on it just from the shock and fear of falling when she was literally at her most vulnerable, and Olivier waited all of half a second before she tried to sit on the girl’s lap. She lusted after that lap, with every single beat of the heart that in the eyes of everyone else in the world had never known love or kindness.

If they had seen, if they had had a way to know what was going through her mind right now… maybe they would have stopped calling her the Ice Queen. There was little about Olivier Armstrong right now that resembled a wall or crown of ice.

Nothing had ever made her lose her footing like this lap right in front of her was doing now.

“Wait,” Zinnia mumbled incoherently when she felt the thighs of the general rub against her own. “Wait, wait. You’re taller…”

Without a second of hesitation, Olivier directly picked her up from that chair as if she weighed the same as the oxygen they both breathed when they remembered to, and Zinnia wrapped her legs around the general’s waist, because she knew what was coming.

“Where was I?” Zinnia asked.

“Wherever you’d like.”

“Ah,” Zinnia said, slowly getting her hands right back where she wanted them. On that stomach she’d seen a thousand times and never had access to, that small crevice of the human body that wasn’t specially beautiful or seductive yet that drew her right in. It was close to everything else, the core of the human being she couldn’t believe she was with right now. Warm and steady and ever-moving, under the chest, a marble sculpture of Olivier’s breaths and heartbeat.

Olivier tensed her stomach at once when she felt Zinnia’s fingers there again, pressed against her black undershirt, and she didn’t lean in again to kiss her. She looked at her, brown eyes shining in the dimness, curious and thirsting. Olivier was such a goner already she could barely refrain from parting Zinnia’s lips with her tongue, but she did, she stood beneath her as a waystone, a curtain of hair separating them from the rest of the empty room.

Eventually, when a couple of buttons of her own uniform had already been undone, Olivier remembered she was allowed to do more than just be there, and she _remembered_ she had done this very thing before, she knew how to do it, she just needed to step out of her head into the fray.

_No,_ she immediately told herself off. _This isn’t work. Don’t you dare think about work._

So she placed her hands on either of Zinnia’s thighs and the fabric covering them. The girl had somehow found the time to change into a dress to leave this place. A farewell dress turned into a gift in the very last second, when that act of leaving could not have been closer. Olivier began to skirt the parting gift up a little, her thumb almost touching flesh now. If only Zinnia hadn’t been wearing tights…

So much closer she would be now, to something she’d only dreamed about, never had. Touch. The real kind. Skin-to-skin. A human body to hide into, to pour into, to be depleted into.

Zinnia freed one of her own hands to help her push down the tights as her dress was slowly lifted more and more.

“Shit…” she let out as she bit her lip. No one had ever taken their time with her, not like this. It only made her love it all more. Anthony had always hurried it up, unable to wait a second more to have her in his arms. Olivier… Olivier enjoyed the wait. She sat there, legs spread slightly apart, hands doing all the work, and her face was so relaxed Zinnia might as well been dreaming indeed. She had never seen Olivier like this. Not once, not even when she was truly sleeping.

Slowly, Olivier raised her up and Zinnia leaned back on the table as Olivier kneeled on the floor, tall even then, and tugged at those damned tights to get them off.

“And you know what I said? ‘Madsen, you’re cute but really… do you have to ask me out in the fucking shower?’”

Zinnia literally squealed at the voice that was coming in their direction. This couldn’t be happening to her. _No one_ could see the mess she’d let a general turn her into.

Without hesitation, Olivier covered the girl’s mouth with one hand, and she gently squeezed at the girl’s thigh to reassure her that everything would be okay, although her own heart was speeding up in her chest.

_Don’t you dare come in here, you fools,_ she thought, hoping to death that they wouldn’t or they would run into a scene they would regret seeing for the rest of their lives. She would never let them walk into a crowded room again in fear they might spread gossip that, for once, would be well-founded.

“So what’d you say?”

“What’d you mean, what did I say? Yes, of course!”

The voices and the footsteps of their owners eventually walked past the room Olivier and Zinnia were in, still as statues. They saw their shadows eclipse whatever little light came from under the door and eventually the conversation faded away. They never got to hear about Madsen’s reaction.

Slowly, Olivier got her hand down from Zinnia’s mouth onto her other thigh. She planned to never move them from there. She had thigh access, she might as well build a house on them.

“Are they gone?” Zinnia muttered.

“Yeah.”

“Okay…”

Olivier tried to go back in, to return to the normal pace of things, but she immediately noticed how Zinnia seemed to have changed moods with this interruption, so she moved her hands away and pretended she needed them for something other than letting them hang at either side of her.

Zinnia cleared her throat, sensing that something had just snapped broken because of her. It was such a terrible feeling, to feel it and not understand why. All she’d done was… ask. All she’d done was worry, because this was fairly new if not new at all, not really, and she suspected Olivier herself wouldn’t highly appreciate _this_ being shared to the rest of the world. Not today and probably not ever.

Life would still go on when they left this beautiful darkness, and it was a specific kind of life that didn’t allow for it. Beautiful had no practical use, all beauty faded, all beauty was eclipsed by something else.

Besides, Zinnia had been literally leaving that life, because it was the right thing, because she still wanted to protect herself against rejection. A rejection that was no more.

_Life still goes on…_

“Look, I… I don’t want to sound rude or anything,” she muttered, “because this is—I mean, I’ve just… But there’s still a man down there waiting to take me to North City.”

Olivier was suddenly jolted back into her routine. Zinnia could see the small unobtrusive wrinkles returning to her face and her frown, back there again.

She wanted to reach out with the tips of her fingers and smooth them away. _Go back to two seconds ago, please. I don’t like seeing you like this. I don’t like knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop you from worrying so hard._

How many senior officers in the whole of Amestris wouldn’t take their jobs seriously, delegating on others for everything and drinking themselves to sleep every night after having enjoyed their bountiful meals? And yet this one woman was one of the same men she was superior to.

“You can still leave, if that’s what you want,” Olivier replied, putting some distance between them as she stood up. She had made the choice to not meddle once, ten minutes ago she’d made the opposite, and now she only knew she didn’t want to be the sole selfish reason that kept the girl here. She needed to regain her comfort three or four paces between them, just to make sure, just to set some boundaries.

Zinnia shook her head energetically and Olivier’s entire plan, if she did have one, crumbled.

“I don’t want to now,” Zinnia replied softly. “I did want to, once, because…” She blushed at the thought of wording this truthfully or not. Did she have the guts to say ‘I wanted to leave because I thought what just happened would only ever happen in my head’? “Because I thought I was a bother around here. I thought you’d… never see me,” she finally admitted in a lower voice.

Olivier let all of her air out in relief.

“I thought you were leaving because you didn’t want to be seen.” _Especially not by me. You hid, you kept hiding, and I no longer knew where to look for you. Or how. Tell me now, how?_

“Everyone wants to be seen,” Zinnia replied, finding Olivier’s right hand to hold distractedly. It was the hand of a soldier, calloused from handling weapons and pens, strong. Hers. And maybe, just maybe, that was the most important adjective Zinnia could ever give it. “I know that much because… I know you liked _me_ seeing you.”

Olivier’s brain short-circuited. She hadn’t been expecting that, not after the moment they’d just shared. Not ever, really. She’d sort of gotten used to the obvious fake anonymity of receiving writings about her. Words that now really did have a face, and one Olivier couldn’t pretend she’d never have to mind again.

She was suddenly hyperaware of all of those words. The good, the strange, and the worse.

Olivier’s frown deepened.

“Do you really think all that about me?” she asked. “You really think me that cold?”

“I didn’t just write about cold,” Zinnia said softly. “I wrote… about what I couldn’t say out loud to you.”

Olivier smirked. “Scared?”

Zinnia just shrugged. “Not more than you. I guess fair’s fair.”

Everything that had taken place in the past fifteen minutes was fair to her, a fair compensation for the months of uncertainty.

“If you’re not leaving, then…” Olivier muttered, regaining some of the lost ground. She was a soldier, after all. All she ever did was try and scrape off some territory from the enemy. An enemy, a lover now. _A lover…_ she repeated as she leaned in, closer and closer until the last vibrations of her vocal chords went right into Zinnia’s ears. Her neck would hurt the next morning, but she paid that thought no mind. She would deal with it when it came, not as the reason for it was right in her grasp. “D’you mind if I…?”

_Finish what I started?_  

* * *

 

The awkwardness of leaving that room couldn’t be compared to anything else in the world. Every piece of clothing was back where it belonged, and however ruffled their hairs had gotten, a few quick adjustments before opening their door had fixed it for now. Nobody would be able to tell—at least at a glance—what had gone down in there.

Neither of the room’s previous occupants would have been able to, as well. They walked back into more than just a well-lit corridor. The reality of things they had interiorized in the past couple of months was waiting for them there. A reality they couldn’t ignore.

Once back under the light, Zinnia was still small and puny and belonging nowhere, and Olivier was someone who would always be out of her reach. A rich girl, a war hero, a general, a tough nut to crack. Zinnia had grown into a woman only because time had wanted it so, but she still came from humble origins and she hadn’t done anything note-worthy in her life. Even her writings were unoriginal, the only legacy she would ever have.

“So, um, I…” she said, unable to lock eyes with the same person she’d been mumbling incoherent words of praise to two minutes ago. “I should really … make some calls and… arrange for my stay.”

_Arrange for my stay,_ Olivier’s brain repeated, unnecessarily emphasizing every word.

Staying. She was truly staying. Officially. It wasn’t an empty promise and yet Olivier fretted. She’d thought this would be permanent once, she couldn’t afford to hit the ground as hard as she had the day she’d found out she’d been wrong in assuming that.

“Are you staying because of… this?”

“I’m not… _not_ leaving because of other things.”

Olivier’s eyebrow went up. “Is that a yes?”

“Look, I don’t know. I just suddenly don’t feel like braving up the world. But… that only stands if your invitation still does as well.”

“It does.”

Zinnia nodded quickly. “Okay, then that settles that, I’m just gonna…” She trailed off as she started walking away, picked up her luggage again, which she’d entirely forgotten about, and just exhaled for a couple of seconds. This was happening, then. Not a dream, not a fantasy. A real thing that had happened and wouldn’t vanish even if she willed it.

Now she had to deal with it, call North City, undo any preparation she’d done just… minutes ago—mere minutes. Would Candie _know_?

“You’re… going in the opposite direction,” Olivier said, a few steps behind her.

Zinnia immediately changed courses as if she wasn’t mortified about this. Any of it. Pick an aspect of it and she would be biting down hard on her lip trying not to dwell on it.

“Yeah, right, so… phone.”

Olivier blinked as she watched Zinnia go.

She, too, would need to get started on some things. A driver drinking coffee somewhere on this floor, waiting for a passenger that was Olivier’s responsibility now. Or maybe… maybe more than a responsibility. _Less_ than what her other responsibilities meant to her. This guest of hers wasn’t even hers, per se. Just… a companion. A partner of some kind. She would look for that defining word she was lacking later, she had a driver to talk to. 

* * *

 

Dialing was the hardest. She knew the voice she was going to hear, and she could more or less imagine this would go down smoothly. But if Candie decided to channel her teasing spirits, Zinnia would be done for. After the day she was having, she felt shaky enough she might even have to sit down for a while to _process_ it all in the measure that it needed to be processed.

_She kissed me,_ Zinnia kept repeating inside her head. _She ran to stop me and she kissed me. And I kissed her back. And now I can’t just pretend I didn’t._

Although, maybe to the woman who had just picked up her phone, yes she could.

“Who is it?” Candie asked.

Zinnia took a deep breath. It was now or never, and she really preferred not to bother the woman any more than she already had with all this business.

Zinnia had done so much lately in the name of running away from feelings and the reality of them, it embarrassed her.

“It’s… it’s me again.”

“Did something happen?” Candie said at once. “Are you okay?”

_Something happened, alright, I just… am not sure what, exactly._

“No, no, I’m fine, I just… I don’t think I’m gonna need to stay at your place anymore.” Zinnia held her breath, expecting many things, none of them good. This was a capital-m mess. She was bailing on a friend, and even if the reasons behind that were cosmically agreeable, Zinnia didn’t mean to cause any more ruckus than she already had. She just wanted this over with at last, so she could finally sit and reassess the mess inside her own head.

“Oh, but… are we still seeing each other?”

“Probably, just… maybe that’s closest to spring than to now.”

Candie suddenly giggled.

“What in the hell is going on with you, huh?”

Zinnia laughed softly, she wasn’t too sure it was allowed. “It’s a long story.”

“You changed your mind pretty fast, that doesn’t sound like a long story to me.”

“It is, trust me.” Months and months and piles of words belonged to this story. If Zinnia tried to tell it in order, she didn’t think she ever could do it properly. “Let’s… just say I’m somewhere nice with nice people, and I thought I had to leave but maybe I don’t.”

Candie smiled over the phone and it was _audible_ , like her cheek was pushing against the receiver as her lips curved.

“Things worked out, I see,” she commented.

“A little, yeah,” Zinnia admitted in a high-pitched chirp.

A brief silence followed in which Zinnia contemplated all the possible ways this would go, and she knew beforehand that Candie, while not entirely Buccaneer-like in this, would still not be gentle to her.

“Just tell that hurricane of a woman that she’ll respond to me if she does anything wrong by you,” Candie only said. She would have rubbed the ‘I told you so’ in Zinnia’s face, but that was a story for another time. They did have much to catch up about.

_Shit._

Zinnia must have made a telling noise because Candie just straight up guffawed.

“My sight isn’t what it used to be, but some things are just too obvious to miss, kid,” she said for all explanation.

Zinnia looked around the room just to check nobody was capable of so much as intuiting what kind of conversation she was having. Miles was happily working on his things, as always. He sure had a gift for pretending not to notice what went on around him.

Turning her back on his just in case, he whispered to Candie: “Okay, yeah, but you can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Not a soul,” Candie promised, still chuckling to herself.

“Just, for the sake of conversation,” Zinnia said, cocking her head to the side. She couldn’t let this one thing go. “How—how long have you…?”

“Oh Zinnia, love…” And there she had her answer. And an extended answer: “You were a blushing little mess when she was around, and she was around quite a lot. It’s two plus two.”

“Shut up. I don’t wanna hear it,” Zinnia stuttered out. “I’ll meet with you in spring and you can make fun of me all you want, then. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the wait.”

“I most absolutely will.” Candie laughed again, then sighed. “Take care of yourself, and if you need me, just send for me. I’m sure your general won’t have much trouble doing that, hm?”

_Your general._ There was not a single universe out there in the fiction of things where Olivier would let anyone call her anybody’s general.

“I so hate you, boss,” Zinnia seethed. Then: “Stay safe and warm out there, will you?” It was still winter out there in the world, even if in her heart the flowers had just begun to bloom and the ice to melt. So much ice had been melted away in those hidden moments inside that room.

After that, Zinnia hang up the phone and just exhaled loudly. That was done, and she wouldn’t have to worry about it till next year. A beautiful chaos of things could have changed dramatically by then. She had nothing to worry about, right?

Miles chuckled softly in clear contradiction of the naiveté in her face and looked up at her.

“Just so you know, all conversations on that phone are recorded—”

“WHAT?” Zinnia shrieked.

Miles didn’t even bat an eye. In fact, he just kept grinning.

“—on account of the fact that they’re meant to be confidential.”

This was funny to him, of course. This was, in simple terms, the equivalent of a royal wedding everyone wanted to hear about. And Zinnia was wearing a gigantic ball gown with jewelry on it, a shining tiara, and a fucking arrow pointing at her saying ‘here be gossip’.

And, as a man who moved towards gossip the same way a moth flies towards warmth and light, Buccaneer chose that very moment of his grandiloquent existence to make the entrance of a lifetime, theater-style, as if everything had ended and Miles was the only source of any possible salvation.

“Miles, what the hell happened? What did I miss?” Buccaneer’s eyes went wide when he saw Zinnia standing there, behind his boss’s desk. “Holy shit. Kid, you’re not a ghost, are you?”

He stomped closer to pinch her cheeks just to make sure.

“ _Definitely_ not a ghost.” He turned to his right. “Miles? Care to explain?”

“Why is it that you’re always cluttering my office, Buccaneer? Don’t you have other _more important_ places to be?” And thus Olivier made her entrance as well. She must have been right on his tail coming back up.

This all had just turned into a bigger chaos than it already was. Zinnia wasn’t too sure right now, after all, that this wasn’t a dream. Only dreams ever got to be this chaotic.

“Not today, I don’t” Buccaneer said. “I leave for the bathroom two seconds and now I’m lost.”

Olivier looked at Zinnia as if saying ‘I am so sorry everyone in this room is this big of an idiot’ and Zinnia just smiled and shrugged. She’d always found Buccaneer’s incessant need to meddle kind of charming, if obtrusive at times. Now she had no choice but to go with it or ask the ground to just swallow her.

Buccaneer squealed to himself when he caught that look between them and noticed the one missed button of Olivier’s usually impeccable state of dress.

“I knew it!”

“Knew what, exactly?” Olivier deadpanned. Today, she would not be giving any more shits. She was done. She planned to take the rest of the day off, cancel everything, just sit on her bed and reflect on her life’s choices. Especially the latter. And she would review as well if it was even normal at this point to have two second-in-command who, instead of just following with their mouths shut, thought it was part of the job to scheme to make her life harder.

“I _knew_ there was something there,” Buccaneer said.

“There certainly _is_ something here right now, Captain.”

“What?”

“My fist in your face,” she said slowly, enunciating clearly as she stood on tiptoe to threaten him properly, in his personal space. She should have been muttering, especially when the omitted party to this conversation was right there, looking at them all like she’d never seen them before, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She knew, and more than knew, that mutters couldn’t placate him right now.

Buccaneer took a tiny step back to gain back his space. “No, thank you. I quite like my nose.”

“One more word and you’ll be saying goodbye to it, are we clear?”

“So, when’s the press conference, eh?”

“Shut up, Buccaneer,” Miles said, grinning.

Zinnia thought it wouldn’t be too much of a bad idea to just slowly slide all the way over where he was and let his bulky self shield her from whatever was happening.

“Yes, shut up. The both of you,” Olivier ordered.

“I didn’t… say anything yet,” Miles said.

“But you were going to.”

“If I get a say, and I’d like to,” Zinnia intervened, “it would help a lot if you took over my kitchen duties for the day, Buccaneer.”

Buccaneer made a confused bird face.

“There’s something there,” she said, repeating his own words back to him and feeling a tremendous wave of joy as she did, “and said something needs to be addressed. By me.”

Zinnia shot one quick look over at Olivier, hoping this wasn’t too bold and stupid, and so help her god she just really wanted this big idiot to go back to whatever he was doing today.

“You’re not leaving?” he asked.

“Nope.”

Buccaneer just went for it and tried to hug the two of them even though they were standing a few steps away from each other.

Olivier lifted one index finger to make him stop.

“Don’t you even think about it.”

“Aw.”

“I’m serious.”

Momentarily placated by the only person who could, Buccaneer smiled at the two of them.

“In that case, I will leave any further investigating to Miles, right, bud?”

“I’m busy…” Miles mumbled in his direction. He wasn’t, but still.

Buccaneer grinned at them one last time and just left. Zinnia let out all of her air at once, like something had just stepped off of her chest.

“I’m going to go … unpack.”

And she would sure as hell not do so slowly. She had a lot to ponder.

She took one inquisitive look at Olivier, who just nodded.

“I’ll help you shortly. There’s some things I need to sort out first.”

Like her mind.

Miles pretended not to hear any of it, but really… all he could think about was how _extraordinary_ it was that Olivier was offering to help the girl to unpack. Of all the excuses in the world she could have given.

Someone needed to teach this woman the ways of being subtle, she had learned all of the wrong things from Buccaneer. Or maybe it just wasn’t in Olivier’s nature to be subtle, even in matters like this one. 

* * *

 

Zinnia sat on the bed, surrounded by clothes she hadn’t worn in months. Clothes that weren’t her own but _were,_ in a way. She just missed the blue. She missed the spaces between the flowery dresses that matched Central’s vibe and the blue she’d adopted as her own because she’d wanted so hard to fit in.

She _had_ wanted to blend in that hard, after all, to not be seen at the same time that she desperately craved for someone to notice her.

Olivier walked in and saw her. Saw her for who she was, behind all the layers she put up for the world to see. She was just a girl, old enough to be more than just that, and young enough that the weight of life still felt too complex for her shoulders.

“Maybe just use the drawers?” Olivier said, closing the door behind her—softly, so it wouldn’t slam. So no one could tell there was a conversation to be had in this room. She didn’t want to cause a commotion of any kind with this, enough had already gone down because of her lack of discretion and Buccaneer’s splendid work at matchmaking.

Zinnia looked up when the door closed, and Olivier couldn’t help but notice the fear in her face. It scared her, too. One of them would have to be the stable, rational mind in the discussion that needed to be had, and Olivier hadn’t been counting on her own brain to remain calm for much of that.

She had crossed lines today, not just general ones but the lines she’d set for herself, all those years ago when she’d first received notice that she was to march north. Today, she’d… gotten involved. Too involved. And then… the involvement had shifted forms so quickly, without her even realizing it.

And it hadn’t been hard only for her. It couldn’t have been. Both sides at a war took losses, after all. The flower girl was covered in fabrics with her flowers and her personal belongings, all wrinkled in her lap and arms. She had lost something too. Something more than just calmness.

“Maybe not,” Olivier added, mostly to herself. They would deal with the literal mess in the room later. First things first, she guessed. A priority that she had put off dealing with for too long.

She stood there, unsure of where to sit, or if she even should. Perhaps the girl might appreciate the distance right now. But Olivier had no way to know, foreign feelings seemed as slippery to her as military terminology to any civilian.

Zinnia didn’t take her eyes off of her. She’d tried to manage the art of looking away for months. In the sun or in the snow, it never mattered to her, Zinnia had always known she wasn’t allowed to look at Olivier. No one was, least of all _her._

And it should have been mutual, their paths should have diverged so very long ago. In that town, before the migration. Zinnia should have stayed in Central with her family, to build the life they expected of her—the life she still expected of herself—but she hadn’t. She had come back here, to a land with many names, none of them kind. Why?

The reason was standing right in front of her. And Zinnia had never noticed it as accurately as now. She’d never been able to indulge in it like this before.

“You stopped me,” Zinnia said. _Twice._ When Olivier hadn’t even been there, when Zinnia herself hadn’t known that the force stopping her had a name. And now, when that force had manifested at last. At long, long last.

“Sort of.”

“No,” Zinnia said, shaking her head. There had been nothing in that… particular contact they’d shared that said ‘don’t go, but only a little’. “You _stopped_ me. Functionally.”

“Impulsively.”

“But it worked,” Zinnia insisted. She threw her hands up in the air only to drop them back on her lap, fingers curling on one of her dresses. “That’s what I mean. I… should have left, but I didn’t.”

Olivier just stood there and Zinnia kept staring. Apparently, today could still get a little worse. She wasn’t sure which of the two of them wanted to run faster out of there.

And still, Zinnia asked:

“Would you sit down with me?”

Olivier did so with an exasperated sigh.

“It was every intention of mine to stop you, but…” she said. “You’re free to go. I won’t say it again, I’ll just assume you know. You’ve always been free to. I’m not here to control which rights you have and which you don’t.”

“Not everyone would have made me turn back, today. It would have taken more than just—“ _A kiss._ She stopped herself right before she said it. She didn’t think she could say it. “Besides, we’re different, you and I. I’m not… like you. I don’t see how we could—” She bit her lip, she was making horrible assumptions and she should fix that before her sentence was over: “—if you still wanted to, I mean…”

Olivier interrupted her before she got her thoughts even more tangled up. Of course they were different. In fact, Olivier had never met someone as different from her. All the people in her life for the past fifteen years had been soldiers, superiors, and enemies. Zinnia was neither. Once, perhaps, a nuisance. Perhaps, always, someone she didn’t know how _not_ to control.

“Do you want… today to happen again?” she simply asked. The rest would follow, she could only hope. First, the basics, then they would see.

Running, not running, embarrassment, delight, then more embarrassment, then running back to a familiar room so she could cry in peace. Zinnia had no doubts about it: “Fuck, no.”

“The… less abhorrent parts of it,” Olivier clarified.

“Oh.” Zinnia looked away. It had definitely not been abhorrent. It had been… nice. So very nice. For a writer, she was running out of words to describe things. Olivier had that effect on her, all her words ran and ran and she had to run after them to pick them up before they left her completely.

She had seemed to realize what the subtext was on this. _Do you want to keep doing what we’ve done? Do you want what you’ve been longing for or should it stay a dream forever?_

”You… scare me,” Zinnia finally offered in a mutter, eyes away from Olivier’s. “What you could do to me scares me.”

“It’s the coat,” Olivier said, smiling lopsidedly.

Zinnia laughed at that. “Yeah, that too.”

“I’m not offering this to you out of… a level head. You don’t know the power you could have. The power you _do_ have. On me.” _And I’m not about to tell you myself, the extent of that power._

“Well, maybe I do know a little,” Zinnia said. She curved her lips into a sad smile and looked Olivier in the eye. “I liked seeing you short-circuit. At first, anyway.”

And didn’t that feel far away…

“Just answer me something honestly,” Olivier said. Honesty before all. Truth and simplicity, hand in hand. “Do you or do you not want to do it again?”

Zinnia gulped audibly.

“Yes,” she said without further hesitation.

_Yes._ She had just said yes, or Olivier had misheard.

“Do _you_?” Zinnia asked in return.

Olivier just nodded. She wasn’t in the right state of mind to answer that in words. That dark room had reminded her what she had been missing, and what she now had just in reach of her fingers. Quite literally, in fact. They sat on the same bed, inches apart, and if she shifted just a little, she could hold it in her hand.

Zinnia just tightened her grip on whatever dress of hers she had on her lap.

“It really has been… a long time since the last time,” Olivier admitted. An oddity. Confessing to this was even odder, somehow. It was a fact that she had long ago lost all practice at anything remotely different from platonic, and she had accepted that for what it was.

“Me too,” Zinnia muttered wetly. She didn’t sound like she was on the brink of tears, but maybe she was close. She lifted her head to look Olivier in the eye again, and when she smiled now it wasn’t sad or doubtful. “But I’ve chosen to stay. And that overpowers everything else. Giving it one try won’t hurt me.” _Even if it might overpower me instead._ She gave a cute shrug. “I mean, we’re literally at the end of the world. What could go wrong?”

“Many things,” Olivier stated matter-of-factly.

So many things. Everything.

“But most of them are not even related to… this,” Zinnia pointed out. There was a war on the way, a winter to survive, and soldiers to keep in check. It was a relief to know that if things did crumble, they would do so outside of their control.

“This?” Olivier repeated.

“This.” Zinnia confirmed. This, indeed.

“This, what?” Olivier dared to challenge her. She needed to hear it too. It might snap her out of whatever had possessed her today. It might remind her of who she was, a soldier who stopped at nothing, who feared nothing, whose feelings had been frozen a long, long time ago and which were finally beginning to thaw just enough to let the light in.

Ice was so opaque sometimes…

“This beginning.” Zinnia said, cleanly.

And Olivier thought it proper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a funny story: I didn't plan to post this chapter today. It's been a reality for me since September, but recently when I was revising chapter 28 and the like I started counting days and realized that the biggest scene between our two protagonists was going to be uploaded precisely on Valentine's Day. Needless to say I fangirled extra hard with myself for that stroke of ... luck? XD and I've been evilly waiting for today to make an appearance in Amestris all Cupid-style, aggressively throwing confetti all over Briggs.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you're having a fantastic day out there regardless of your sentimental situations, and I send you all a little bit of love from my corner of the world <3  
> This chapter, and the one before it, are after all hymns to all the love I have received from you, all those squeals about slow burn and will-they-won't-they, and of course they're an hymn to the fucking love story that has existed in my head since I started watching FMAB and that now, little by little, gets to exist outside of it too.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	30. The song of winter

They folded clothes together for a while, put them in drawers and left them there. They would have been empty, if Zinnia hadn’t made use of them. This room, without her, would have returned to its original state. Devoid of life, only ever given a glimpse of it when Olivier went to sleep very late at night.

It was a pleasant routine, unpacking, although silent. Zinnia had no idea what she should bring up in conversation. Sometimes speaking made it worse, and if she made ‘today’ any worse, she’d end up crying in a corner when no one could see her. And she shared a room, which made it a little harder than usual to _not_ be seen.

When she was done, Zinnia sighed. Now that her hands were no longer busy with such a mindless task, she just needed to figure out how to deal with this. A beginning, alright. And beginnings meant her foresight was crippled and she just had to trust whatever was coming would be something survivable by her standards.

“All done?”

Zinnia nodded.

“I just need to get my uniform back from the laundry room.”

Olivier frowned. “Do you still want to wear it?”

She had made certain assumptions that this change in both their lives entailed more than the change itself but everything surrounding it. Their routines, their schedules, their duties. She no longer felt obliged to include Zinnia in the fort’s daily life in order to suppress certain things. They were… out in the open now, at least to the one person who should know about them.

“I wouldn’t want to be the … odd one out,” Zinnia said. _Especially now._ Because, realistically, how long did a thing like this last in the shadows, with Miles and Buccaneer lurking around?

“You have all these clothes and you won’t wear them?”

Zinnia finally closed the drawer, fingers hovering over the handle for one second longer than she had to. She looked Olivier in the eye.

“Do you … want me to wear them?” she said.

Olivier merely shrugged. “They’re _your_ clothes.”

It truly wasn’t any of her business what Zinnia decided to do about that. She couldn’t care in the slightest, and… besides, wearing dresses in winter couldn’t amount to be a good thing.

She moved towards the door. If she stayed one minute longer she would definitely send that conclusion she’d come to to hell and definitely advise her to go with her normal clothes. There were already too many uniforms in this place.

“I need to go,” Olivier said. _To do what?_ To be honest, she didn’t really think she had it in her to focus on work today, on anything that wasn’t this morning and everything that had led to it. She couldn’t wait for night to fall so she could scurry out of her office and just… _feel_ somewhere safe and secluded where her mind would be the only one to judge her.

“I can move rooms if that’s…” came the muffled voice of the flower girl from behind her. Olivier turned around slowly and saw her there, demure and tiny, like the guest she’d been time ago and grown out of. Olivier had, unwillingly, helped bring that back into her own room, and she didn’t want it to _be_ back. She missed the Zinnia who would finish the sentence at once if only to spite her, although this was the farthest thing from spite. “I was thinking maybe you would be more comfortable that way.”

“You’re fine where you are,” Olivier said. “Unless you don’t want to be.”

And the backlash of hearing herself say that was enough to practically rush out of the room and put out a fire that only burned within her.

Zinnia just stared.

And she did want to be here. Of course she did. But that didn’t make it any easier, putting books back up on those shelves, as if they were hers. They were a loan. And a loan a second time around felt like too much of a kindness, a kindness from someone not prone to them.

The remainder of the day took its sweet time to arrive, as if the world had slowed down and minutes lasted hours. They sat at opposite floors of the fort, apart and not really knowing what they were doing about it. One talk didn’t fix it all, _none_ of this really fixed it. It had just… at least put them on the same page about things, without having really named the things they wanted.

Maybe they would, eventually, when the shock faded.

To be honest, Zinnia might have really benefited from not sharing a room tonight, of all nights. When it got dark in and out, when she came in after working all day and they were both alone. Anything could happen, and a very specific type of ‘anything’ without a little bit of probing around to see what the hell was going to happen, of all.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” Zinnia told herself. It’s not like she wasn’t … curious about baring that tall woman the same way Zinnia had been bared earlier. But she still needed reassurance about so many things her head swirled around and around just by thinking about all the answers she didn’t have.

When it was time for lunch, Zinnia made sure to grab the coat that she hadn’t returned (and wasn’t planning to) and to appear in the kitchens a good half an hour later than her usual time.

She wasn’t ready to face the prying eyes she surely would there. Buccaneer wouldn’t wait much to curl around her and just ask, without scruples or any hint at why he should have them. Deep down, she knew his intervention had only sped things up. What needed to be there had already been, and he had been the first to spot it. Zinnia didn’t want to think about what might have happened after she’d left, if Olivier would have had to face a very red-in-the-face Buccaneer, swearing to all the gods he knew that she’d just missed something very important when she’d most needed to be alert and logical.

And maybe because Zinnia was shying away from it, what she was trying to avoid was the first thing she met when she meant to get into that kitchen, get something quick to eat and disappear into the falling night: Buccaneer surrounded by his clique.

Zinnia blushed to the root of her hair and looked down, thinking that maybe he wouldn’t notice her if she did.

“Well, well, well, look who’s here,” he said, wrapping a humongous arm around her shoulders.

“A very hungry gal,” she said.

“Who can probably spare a few seconds of her _free_ time to tell us some details, eh?”

She drew the line right here and glared at him in a way she would have never dared to before. It was normal for him and the rest to be curious and to gossip, because they had no other glimpse into a normal life outside of that, but to project into it this hard wasn’t pleasant for her, and she imagined Olivier would appreciate some more discretion as well. If this landed in the wrong ears, her reputation might suffer, and Zinnia would blame herself for it for the rest of her days.

She wouldn’t be the one to make the wall of Amestris crumble.

“My life isn’t for fucking consumption, Buccaneer,” Zinnia said calmly. “Good day.”

She broke free, pushing past the gathering of men, and sat down at the furthest empty table she found to eat. The sooner this day ended, the more easily she would breathe.

She just needed rest and space to think about this. She just needed a bit more of time as well to process it all. Now, she had a prospect of _something_ in the works, and a few hundred men who appeared to be most interested in how that turned out.

And, surprisingly, she wanted to be able to focus on the first, rather than the latter. But if they gave her no choice, she wouldn’t play coy either. A winter romance could sure wait until she’d screamed their heads off, and she had enough of a cordial friendship going on with Buccaneer to do that now.

Later, she returned to her empty room and found a bit of that space she was looking for. Unfortunately, having that didn’t mean her mind would be easily made up as to other things. 

* * *

 

“Back already?” Miles’s kind words welcomed her in, like no time had passed and this was just another normal day in their normal lives. Miles had been her health compass for so long, even when she’d insisted she didn’t need such a thing, she didn’t find it strange he was asking now this normally about something _not normal_ at all.

Olivier hung her coat on her chair and sat down.

“Back for good, yes.”

Miles let her acclimate for a couple of seconds. It had been such an ecstatic day, she needed it. Then, he asked quietly:

“How is she?”

“Shaking like a leaf.”

Miles smiled. “And how are _you_?”

Olivier looked at her messy desk to avoid answering truthfully. “I’m fine.”

“Was I right, then, General?” Miles asked, and not because he wanted another medal or to take all the credit for something that didn’t affect him. He sounded genuinely interested in what she might have to say, no matter what.

“About regretting it if I didn’t do it…” she said. Then she sighed. “We will see. We will just… see.”

He allowed himself a tiny smirk. “I don’t think that woman’s the only one shaking like a leaf today.”

“No, she wouldn’t be, would she?”

Olivier had every reason to want to quit everything and just hide until she knew how to control _this._ A beginning, Zinnia had called it. Beginnings were the most terrifying force on the planet, because they never let you in on what was coming at you as soon as the beginning itself was over. And this beginning didn’t just affect her, after all.

“Miles, I’m going to have to ask you to keep out of it now. You and the captain, despite my insistence, have continued with something that you shouldn’t—and you’ve been successful. But your involvement _needs_ to end here, do I make myself understood?”

“Yes, sir.” He nodded. “It shouldn’t have happened before, either.”

“No,” Olivier agreed. “But now… wherever I end up, it’s up to me. I don’t want her to stay because she thinks she has to, because you’ve made her think she’ll be happier, safer here than any other place. She won’t.”

Miles didn’t hesitate before he replied:

“I’ll do my best, but you know Buccaneer. He’ll take a little more convincing.”

“I trust you’ll manage.” she smiled placidly back at him.

“Yes, and if you need anything else, I—”

“I know,” she cut him off before he finished that sentence. She didn’t think she could handle it. Too mushy for her, for this day. Finally, she’d dared to fire the shots. Now she needed to just… be okay with the choices she’d made—been, at times, helped to make.

What she was going to do, or deciding she would eventually do, nobody could help her with. Or no one should.

Luckily for her, Miles was a reasonable man, no matter if sometimes he let Buccaneer drag him into morally questionable endeavors, and he let her have some quiet. They worked in silence throughout the entire day, even after lunch break, and she couldn’t have felt more grateful for that than she did.

She needed to be alone in her own head, to figure some things out, and if he’d brought up something to talk about to pass the time or lectured her on how much she worked, that wouldn’t have been possible.

Olivier and the flower girl had… done something she couldn’t forgive or forget. They had broken the rules. And she’d liked it, and if they had agreed on anything, they had agreed that they both had liked it enough to do it again. But under whose terms? And for how long?

She tried to think of it as simply as possible, yet every time she came across the word ‘girlfriend’ in her mind, she panicked. She had been twenty the last time she’d been well-versed on the world of girlfriends and relationships and—god forbid— _love._

“… too old for that now,” she muttered to herself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she quickly said to keep Miles off of it. He was younger, he might still remember how to do these things. And she would rather seal her lips together than ask him for help.

Dates couldn’t be that complicated. Feelings shouldn’t be that complicated. She’d had to plan around days with a higher level of difficulty, and she’d lived through them. She could do this, if she approached it correctly, if she came up with the right strategies.

She’d kept Drachma away twice now. With her honor and pride at stake, she would do this. She just needed a little time to think about it, and maybe a little more than just a little.

On her way to dinner, several hours later, she already had a plan. A few plans, in case the first few didn’t work. She would ignore the panic and push past it, the same way she’d been taught to do at the academy.

_Your fear will only get you killed if that’s what you choose to follow instead of whoever’s in charge of your sorry little asses,_ they’d told her and the rest of her year.

She was in charge of many more asses now aside from her own. That responsibility meant that any fear she might feel was irrelevant, she had to make sure her voice was heard much more clearly than the voice of fear. The last thing the fort needed was to get lost in that of her own.

Olivier wanted to follow something else, something that didn’t stem from panic or led to hysteria and feelings. She wanted to follow her common sense and establish some basic ground to work from. Fort Briggs hadn’t always stood proud as a wall, so very little forts in the whole of Amestris had ever gotten to that level. Most were built as four-story buildings in the middle of whatever grounds they were on, big enough to host many numbers and defendable by any standards, always aimed to be a place from where attackers marched forward. Briggs was famous because it kept intruders away, instead of conquering more ground every decade and expanding the border.

“Good night, General,” Miles told Olivier when they both exited the office. He usually got down to the kitchens at a different time than her, leaving her to work on whatever was left at that hour. Sometimes, if he’d managed to convince her to quit overworking herself, it made sense, then, to walk there together. But today of all days was a perfect chance for him to go his own way.

Whether he was waiting for her to get to the kitchens first or he had somewhere else to go, she didn’t know and she didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.

Tonight… she would sit down again on her bed and she would talk about things, even if it hurt to do so. Because it needed to be done. She needed Zinnia to know, the same way she hadn’t let Ianthe know. She would do better this time, she owed it to herself.

A little food would do her good, and if she managed to distract herself from so much planning, then maybe she would even find the miraculous lost idea that would drastically help her case. Because of the late hours there wouldn’t be many people down there; she hoped Miles would have the decency to sit far away from her and not mention _anything_ in public.

Someone bumped against her shoulder on the way down the stairs.

“Shit, sorry.”

Olivier wasn’t even going to say anything, but then she realized who it was and she had to make an effort to not look surprised—and glad to be bumping into her again, twice in the same day. At least now neither were in a hurry.

“Back for more?” Olivier said.

“I could ask you the same.”

Ah, but they both knew Zinnia would never ask that with all these people around them, she wasn’t dead enough inside for that yet. Olivier risked playing around with words and intonations because it had been a long time since she’d felt she had anything to lose. Usually, she wouldn’t mean that kind of question, and that always made it so much easier to ask them now that she did.

They kept walking.

“Are you… especially hungry?” Olivier asked. She hadn’t actually planned to say any of this until it had been a few days and they had talked more and some of the initial uncertainty had blurred away, but the girl was making obvious efforts to prolong this conversation and Olivier wasn’t going to be the one to call her out on that when she was about to do the very same herself.

“No, should I be?”

Olivier made a face, regretting this instantly. She wasn’t ready to do this right now, she’d hoped that Zinnia would say yes and then Olivier could have waited until after what promised to be an awkward dinner. This wasn’t going according to plan, and even if she should know how to handle it, suddenly all she knew was that improvising wasn’t her forte. She had captured people and driven them to death slowly, without having the slightest clue where she would be getting with that. But right now she definitely was not the queen of improvisation.

“Perhaps it’s better if you just eat first.”

“Better for what?” Zinnia asked.

And Olivier, who saw what nobody else could, had failed to see this question coming. And, thus, she had no clue what to say that would sound witty and that would help her not ruin things a little too early.

“I want you to see something,” she admitted, her voice a little less commanding than usual.

And Zinnia’s body jolted as if someone had just thrown something very heavy at her face. Her hand immediately reached for the handrail and her foot failed to meet the next step on the stairs. Olivier stopped as well, not realizing the few men who were grumpily complaining about them clogging the way down.

She was too lost in the constellations of brown standing right beside her to notice.

“I don’t mind eating later, to be honest,” Zinnia said.

“Then… Is it okay if we stray from the normal course of things?”

Now, Zinnia was positively intrigued. That particular way of phrasing it could only be referring to one thing.

Abruptly, they turned against the crowd to find an unoccupied elevator. Zinnia’s heart pounded against her ribs. She had no idea what was going on but her brain was already sending her less and less mild suggestions about what it could be. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to… jump to certain things at the moment. She’d had more than enough this morning and she knew _that_ alone would take a few days to fully process.

She could still see herself crying in a corner later tonight.

“What exactly is it that I … need to see?” she managed to ask in a small voice. Once inside the elevator, she made sure to stay a good couple of inches away. If she didn’t, she was sure they wouldn’t be getting back to the real world again in a while. Long enough for people to complain about a ‘malfunctioning’ elevator.

“You really don’t _need_ to see it,” Olivier said, amused. “But you might like it. I know I do.”

“Oh…” Zinnia said. Now she was sure there would be no need to paralyze the normal functioning of the elevators, at least for the moment being. Where were they even going that they’d moved past the usual range of floors Zinnia was used to?

Then—

_Winter. The promise of winter._

Olivier was taking her to the top of the wall.

When the doors of the elevator opened and they walked into the fresh fallen snow, Zinnia’s jaw fell. She could feel it, the wind in her face and the chill in her bones that she knew well enough from the time she’d spent patrolling. Winter at its best, a gentle winter now that the storm was over and their hearts were all in the right places.

“Fucking freezing,” she said with a grin starting to spread all over her face.

“As promised,” Olivier replied gently.

Zinnia nodded. “I remember.”

And there was a smile there, for a second. A shared smile.

Zinnia walked closer to the edge of the wall, the final step between solid concrete and falling down to meet the cold, icy ground. There was no handrail there, and she wasn’t at all taken aback by that. If anything, she’d sort of expected it.

“Careful,” Olivier said, seeing what she was doing. “It’s slippery.”

Zinnia said nothing. She just… took it all in. The light was fading around them, graying and yellowing and each second a bit darker. Night was falling on the valley. If Iver had been active, she might have been able to see the lights switched on in the distance. For now, though, all winter had to offer her were the mountains in all of their splendor, the cascades of gray and white, all rock and snow.

And the woman standing behind her.

Winter had brought her here as well, a different winter than the one spreading before the two of them.

“Earlier today,” Zinnia said, as she realized that it indeed had been that very morning, “I was sad that I’d never really… see this.”

“It’s not at its most impressive,” Olivier said, matter-of-factly, hands behind her back. “Most people prefer to see it at sunrise.”

Zinnia turned around to look at her, and all Olivier perceived was the song of the winter she had always loved in the brown hair of the woman standing right in front of her.

“I guess I’ll have to ask Miles to make room for me to get a sunrise patrol.”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to.”

Zinnia sighed and smiled.

“Now, why am I really here?” she asked.

_I’m scared, I’m scared I’ll let you go because I don’t know how to do anything else. That’s all I’ve ever done, pushing people away to keep them safe._ Olivier had no answer, except the one she could not give.

“Honesty,” she replied instead, softly.

“Oh, are you making me swear a vow or something? Should I get a tattoo with your name?”

In any other moment, Olivier would have appreciated the biting remark because it was good, but right now she was two steps away from losing her mind. She had absolutely no idea how to deal with the … emotional part of this. Feelings weren’t meant to be her stepping stone, they’d never been. Ianthe had always taken care of it, her last and only real relationship. She’d had other partners, sporadic and wonderful, but only in bed. And never mimicking Ianthe’s companionship. Now she was walking into grounds she had no control over or knowledge about.

“What do you want from me?” Olivier asked.

“What do you want to give me?” Zinnia asked in return.

_Anything. Everything. Can that be?_

“Whatever you want.”

“Well, that’s not very practical. We could spend a week here, because I won’t take anything you don’t want to give, and you won’t give anything I don’t want to take. Loopy, if you ask me.” Zinnia rambled and rambled and rambled. Words took over when she couldn’t even think straight. _What do I want, she asked me. As if I have ever, at any point of my life, known what I wanted._

Although, perhaps, now it would be a little easier to pinpoint.

Blue on blue, yellow and pink, and … body heat. A person to grow closer to, to giggle with in a gymnasium when it could not have been less appropriate for her to.

Olivier just shrugged. “I have time.”

“What’s going on? “Zinnia asked. “Exactly, I mean. Because I have a feeling this is not about… the room.” _The room where I felt you closer than I ever have, the room that I left and immediately felt the closeness disappear._

“It’s not about rooms, no,” Olivier said. She bit her lip. Should she just say it? Could she, even? “It’s about—” Oh, fuck, there she went. “It’s about … whether this is going to be about sex or… not.”

Zinnia immediately covered her face with her hands, blushing harder than the cold could possibly make her, and she actually spun around. She couldn’t face another human being right now.

“I’m serious,” Olivier said, not as firmly as she’d hoped to.

“No, I know, just…” Zinnia squealed. “Why did you have to be so _direct_?”

“What? Was I supposed to toe around that for weeks?” Olivier sounded mildly panicky, only ever matched by Zinnia’s own panicking.

“Yes! No. I don’t know!”

“Is there more to it, then?”

Zinnia gave another squeal. She finally dared to turn around again and peek between her slightly less tightly pressed together fingers.

“… yes,” she replied, and Olivier’s chest heaved out easily at long, long last.

“Okay,” Olivier said. She could work with that. She could _gladly_ work with that.

“Okay? What’d you mean, okay? I just told you my… thing. It’s your turn!”

Olivier couldn’t do anything but repress an urge to smile stupidly. She could not believe she was having this conversation. Her plan had comprised a little moment around the impressive sights and maybe _a_ conversation, certainly not this one.

“Fine,” she conceded in the end, “but you have to look at me.”

Zinnia shook her head. “Keep dreaming.”

“Just look at me and then I will tell you.”

“I think I’m good just with hearing you, thanks.”

“Don’t be childish.”

“Remember that whole bit I said about being scared? Well, I’m scared right now too.”

“Zinnia,” Olivier said, and Zinnia positively felt her entire soul ascend. Her name, uttered by that one person who had power over it. Olivier could command the galaxies in Zinnia just by saying it, when she wanted and how she wanted it. And the worst part was that… Olivier was already so used to power that she would either think this one puny or she would know exactly what to do with her. Either way, Zinnia’s heart began to flutter in thick anticipation. “Look at me.”

_When a general orders, you follow. And you follow because you believe._ So Zinnia did. She slowly removed her hands form her face and tried not to panic visibly.

“Looking,” she muttered. Maybe it was the cold, finally filtered through to her. “Now just break it to me.” _Tell me it’s just sex for you. I might still leave, after that. Break my heart._

What was another crack in that heart who had already taken months and months of silence?

“Is there more?” Olivier wondered aloud. She actually chuckled feebly, after that. It felt like such a silly question after so long. But she had to answer it, and she had to do it now. No matter how scared it made her feel. “Yes. Yes, there is.”

“Oh,” Zinnia said in surprise. “Oh…”

“Now,” Olivier said, gaining some composure. “What do you want from me?”

And right now Zinnia did take that seriously. They were on the same page, more or less seeking the same from one another. Now it was time to name the limits, to figure out the concrete aspects of it, to pinpoint where this was going to go, if it was indeed going anywhere.

“Hug me,” she asked.

“What?” There went the short-circuiting.

“What I want from you right now… is a hug. Do you feel like you are up for giving me that?”

“I’d originally asked that so we could—” Olivier stopped herself. It didn’t matter. It was cold and it was winter and they were both exhausted. “Yes, I am up for that.”

As if this was an office meeting somewhere where Olivier still remembered the importance of paperwork.

“Okay,” Zinnia muttered and she slowly walked up to her. She had no idea how to approach this. How long ago had she last hugged someone? Back home, maybe? Anthony, who always craved to touch her last and remember her by that? Touches who didn’t matter to her as much as this one, because it was, for once, what she needed, what she wanted, and what she knew how to want.

_The Mountain at the Border_ , Zinnia thought. Every time they stood this close, every time they would be alone now, Zinnia still held her breath for a moment as she processed how small she was right next to Olivier. Not just shorter, but small.

Tentatively, shaking a little—and not just because of the weather—, she put her hands around the general’s waist and pulled her closer, and then she felt Olivier’s arms doing the same with her, wrapping around her shoulders.

“What do you want from me?” Zinnia asked in a very thin voice.

Olivier gently brought a hand up to the back of Zinnia’s neck.

“Your patience,” she finally replied. “I’m not very good at this. Do you think you’re up for that?”

“I have nothing but time, … Olivier.” 

* * *

 

Getting back to the room proved itself a daunting task. Winter did sing a wonderful song, gentle and mysterious like the melody a siren lures sailors in with. Without the danger of freezing to death somewhere and welcomed in by the promise of a bed and three meals a day, winter didn’t look menacing at all. It actually appeared a little like it did in stories, a character with its own personality and role to play. In this case, it wasn’t there to threaten them but to blow at their backs until their eyes met.

They had dinner together that night under the very prying gaze of Buccaneer, who at least had enough decency left in him to just make all his inappropriate comments to a mortified-looking Miles. If this was going to be her life now, Olivier thought, just dinners and nights and Miles handling the worst that came with it, then she could get used to it.

Once she learned how to do it. Because she had to learn how to do it. She couldn’t keep having ideas for stolen moments as if they were war strategies written on a worn notebook and delivered as precisely as one could. This wasn’t a war.

This was the part of her life that stood the furthest away from the war that was coming at her, full steam ahead.

The dreaded moment of the day came not longer after that dinner. They let the kitchens get empty, dragging their last bites of their meals until they were alone and only a third of the lights of the room were on.

They hadn’t spoken much after that hug on top of the wall. Olivier had little to draw from in order to find a suitable way to speak. What would she even talk about? Weather, work, war. Little else. And she didn’t usually engage in personal information interchanges until much later, when it became a necessity.

Silence suited the two of them better, for now.

Then, they eventually had to get up, clean their plates, and turn off all the lights before heading upstairs. Zinnia kept walking faster and faster, as if wishing she could just get there and get on with it, and once she got the door to the room open, it took her little more than three seconds to get rid of her coat and uniform, don her more comfortable pieces of clothing and prepare her mat on the floor.

 “What are you doing?” Olivier asked her, raising an eyebrow. She had only had time to remove her coat and her jacket, not so preoccupied with getting undressed at the speed of light as her roommate.

“It’s my turn,” Zinnia said, very clearly looking at Olivier’s eyes so she wouldn’t look elsewhere.

“Get up. Come here.” Olivier said, leaving the undressing for later. She had more important matters to tend to at the moment. Her calmness, though, would only last as long as Zinnia’s uneasiness would. Then, Olivier would crumble and there would be no force on this earth who could stop it from happening.

“Okay…” Zinnia did as she was told and rose slowly from the floor to approach the bed.

“Sit.”

Zinnia sat down and looked up at Olivier. She had to bend her neck back a little in order to look her in the eye and not at the black undershirt that was literally right in front of her.

“I don’t really mind the floor,” Zinnia said at once. She’d grown to like it, especially the perspective it allowed her to have from down there in the mornings. She could see where this was going and she didn’t know how she’d deal with it once it was out there.

 “I do. You could… I mean, if that’s okay with you, you could sleep with me here.”

Out of the corner of her eye Zinnia tried to discern just how wide this bed was and whether it would kill her to accept that proposition without blushing.

“It’s…” She did blush, indeed. “Small.” _Narrow and warm and delicious. And a leap about two miles too big for today_.

“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” Olivier reminded her. “I can steal a mattress from somewhere.”

It would be embarrassing, to say the least. Walking into a crowded dorm just to haul one of the spare mattress onto her shoulders and promptly head back to her own room. It would give the men something to talk about, for sure. And she still didn’t want them to _know._

“What’s changed to make you want to go to such extremes? I thought you were fine with me sleeping on naked wood.” Zinnia smirked without being able to stop herself.

“You know full well what’s changed,” Olivier almost barked.

Zinnia gave a little laugh that hid more nervousness than actual humor.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything,” she said in the end. “I’ve slept in worse places than your floor.”

“You’re not sleeping on the floor.” Olivier repeated, putting her jacket back on, slowly, as if she wanted to let Zinnia savor it. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to fall asleep.”

“Not doing that.”

“Stop waiting up for me.”

“Now that I’ve all the incentive to?” Zinnia said, giggling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will let you know that the conversation these two have on top of the wall had me making the most ridiculous noises (blame my own feels) when I first drafted it. And, of course, I just made noises rereading it too.
> 
> Also, shoutout to devoiddeavor, who finally gets to read some talking scenes :3


	31. All about winning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and hence the self-indulgence begins! (does it ever end - I've now officially written 300k words of mere self-indulgence, so the answer has gotta be no)

When the day arose, new and fresh like snow falling from the sky, it didn’t erase everything that had happened the day before. And maybe it should have, Olivier would have had her conscience clear.

She had _run,_ losing all poise and all the reputation she’d made herself believe she deserved. And then the world had gone to shit, and she’d been the one responsible for it. She might manage to build a new world from the remnants of the old one, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t shattered it to pieces without the slightest bit of remorse.

She’d woken up early and she’d cracked one eye open just to check the girl was still there. A new day that followed yesterday’s early storyline would have meant the girl would have been far away by now, in that life that Olivier had never gotten a glimpse into. And that’s what Olivier should have wanted—a normal life, an insight into what other people had that she had given up on—, but she didn’t want it now, the same way she never had.

It brought her _joy_ to see the girl there, asleep and safe, almost level with her own mattress. If Olivier reached out a little—just a little—she might be able to brush hands with her. _And how ridiculous that would be_ , she told herself.

_Yet how sweet and … rewarding._

Contact for the sake of contact. That existed, and she could have it now if she asked. _I won’t take anything you don’t want to give,_ Zinnia had said. They both could build a ladder of their own wants and needs, and that was a practice as old as time and just as forgotten.

She would be nineteen again, now. And she’d long ago thought that her nineteen-year-old self had had a lot to grow into. How did one grow backwards, exactly? How did one become their old self in order to improve it?

Maybe it all started with this morning, the morning of change.

_Ask. Just ask. Ask and answer._

It couldn’t possibly be so hard. It just took discipline and a level head. She could do this. And yet she remained in bed, feigning sleep, until she felt the other woman stir next to her.

Olivier had to close her eyes and keep the memories of the day before out of her mind. She wouldn’t function normally with them sprinkling her in emotions all day long.

Zinnia sat on her mattress, rubbing her eyes in order to get rid of the fog-like vision that followed waking up, and took a quick look at Olivier, who she supposed was still sleeping, before she picked up her clothes and started to get dressed, eyes droopy still.

“Where are you going?” Olivier asked, in order to startle her. It definitely wasn’t about the question itself but the act of asking it when it was least expected.

“Work.” Zinnia yawned, not at all taken aback. “Plus, I have to scream at your captain for … being indiscrete.”

The whole fort at some point had wished for a chance to scream at Buccaneer precisely about this. About the meddling—unnecessary meddling.

Zinnia dropped her undershirt on the floor and Olivier quickly bended forward to pick it up for her.

“Yes, please do,” she said as she gave it back.

She made an effort out of not establishing eye contact, hoping to convey a casual and laid-back mood, but she just cursed herself in silence when Zinnia definitely eyed her like a woman who wanted to be eyed back.

“Should we… see each other for lunch or something?” The question itself would have been fine in any other context, and it was in this very context that Zinnia came to regret not having paid more attention to relationship stuff while she’d still been in one she could have learned from.

_Who asks this? No one. You ask it because you’re an idiot,_ she reprimanded herself, quickly getting her arms through the t-shirt’s holes.

“I don’t know,” Olivier replied. She was still sitting on the bed as if she didn’t run this whole place. It was a bit unnerving to be hurrying while she was so content over there. “We usually do.”

“Yes, but I mean, do you _want_ to do something with me?” Zinnia said, cocking her head a little, letting her bangs cover the fact that she was not at all confident about the decision of asking this so very straight-forwardly. She would not ask Olivier Armstrong about what normal couples did in their free time, not just because she was embarrassed to do so but because she had a hunch Olivier had even less of an idea about what couples did. “After work. Or before work. Or at night. Any time is good for me.”

Wasn’t that what people said before making a professional appointment? Was Zinnia really so rusty? She’d written decently poetic stuff before, couldn’t she just make an effort and channel that corny vein of hers instead of talking like a secretary?

She let all her air out, trying not to look flushed.

Olivier blinked.

“You might benefit from training again, if you’re staying.”

And Olivier might benefit from the sights as well. It was a mutually benefitting deal that she wouldn’t admit to wanting.

Zinnia rolled her eyes at the mention of her staying and the implication that she might still leave (she wasn’t, she had never meant to), then she nodded, tying her laces.

“I was planning on kicking your ass sometime soon, anyway.” Her smile grew as she spoke and it was dazzling. She still had hope to move the mountain, indeed.

“Walk before you run,” Olivier said sarcastically from the bed, then she wrapped herself in the blankets and turned her back to a blushing Zinnia.

_Running is what I’m good at,_ she thought to herself, taking one last look at the illuminated room and the woman giving even more light to it than the dawn ever would. In her stomach, asking for nourishment already, she had a sinking feeling that the conversations they’d had wouldn’t be enough to quench her uneasiness.

She needed words for this. What were they were? Who was she?

If she were to get a tray of edibles and sit down to write her father another postcard that would get sent in spring, what would she even say?

_I fucked a senior officer of the military. And maybe I like her. And she hinted at maybe liking me back._

And her dad would reply in lengthy and generationally inappropriate slang and punctuation that she could invite her home any day.

Thankfully, this morning Zinnia had very clear that she just wanted a croissant or something and to go straight to her department and _not_ think about girls coming to her family’s home with her. Maybe she’d grab a cup of coffee as well, to stay awake and alert. She’d find a way to trick her mind into focusing later on.

_Olivier and my mum. Potent mix, isn’t it?_

She’d trick her mind into focusing, yes.

Into not thinking about this date to train again, which might entail something completely different from fighting.

Into not thinking about the last time she’d let go of everything and fallen and then dared to pull Olivier down with her as well. _Bold. Bold move._

There would be no way she wouldn’t think about this for the rest of her life, wouldn’t there?

And, apparently, judging by what she could hear from just around the corner, where Buccaneer’s table was, the world didn’t plan on helping her move it along.

The door to the department was closed, so Zinnia pressed her ear against it, trying to pick up what the voices inside were saying. It was Buccaneer, she really shouldn’t have wondered too long what it was about.

“I’m bored,” he’d just said, yawning.

“Find something to do,” said Miles, dully. Miles, his ever-present second-hand man for matters of the heart—foreign heart, never Buccaneer’s own. “Don’t you have routes to plan?”

“And budgets to make. And people to bother. Guess what I’ll choose?”

“Budgets,” Miles said, still hoping one day Buccaneer decided to listen and do exactly that. Would the world have been a better place without his incessant gossip and his interest in other people’s lives? Arguably, yes. Would anyone really want to live without having something, morally ambiguous as it was, to do? Not really.

“You thick little tree…” Buccaneer told him, chuckling. “Isn’t there anything new on that office of yours I could read?”

_Oh hell fucking no,_ Zinnia thought. She’d been leaving the occasional dumb writing on Olivier’s table, because they’d played at that game before and it was always worth it to score a blush or a frown. But not from Buccaneer, definitely not from the one guy who could turn those into a bulletin board.

“Even if there was,” Miles said calmly. “I’ve been ordered to keep you away. _Expressly._ ”

“No need to break my heart, eh?” Buccaneer laughed. “Who says I can’t just sneak in for a second to, um, consult something with you?”

“Me. And don’t start. Just take this as what it is: an extracurricular activity.”

“I’ve sightings on the boss dragging a mattress all by herself last night,” Buccaneer said proudly, like he’d been the first to find out about a royal marriage.

Miles rolled his eyes.

“There’s several theories going around.”

“In one night? That’s impressive,” Miles said, very unimpressively.

“Where does Olivier hide her, huh?” Zinnia did her best at just closing her fists very tightly and not busting in right that second to show exactly where she’d just been hiding. _The little shit…_ “No one knows. No one thought to ask, either. Amateurs.”

Miles got fed up. “Why do people need an extra mattress for, I wonder, Buccaneer?”

Buccaneer took the question seriously. “Not fucking. You’d use a big one for that.”

“I don’t even know why I talk to you.” Miles took a few steps towards the door, and the handle on Zinnia’s side of it moved. She quickly pressed herself against the door, sucking in air, so that when he left the room he wouldn’t see or hear her there. The idea of making an entrance was appealing, but the idea of getting caught red-handed was not. “You’ve patrol after kitchen duty. That’s all I came here to say, and good day to you.”

“Hey, no need to be grumpy because the boss has chosen a _girl_ over the likes of you, Miles,” Buccaneer said. “What were the odds of a _girl_ coming in here?”

“Exponentially smaller than the odds of you getting your nose split in two this week.”

“Love you too!” Buccaneer chuckled as Miles finally got the door open and left.

Then Zinnia came in, not caring in the slightest that it hadn’t been long enough for her silence to count as being stealthy, walked past Buccaneer and said matter-of-factly while she plopped down on her stool:

“Has anyone ever told you how _nosey_ you are?”

Buccaneer laughed without any real amusement. So she had heard, huh?

“You might benefit from a nose job,” Zinnia observed. “Miles looks skilled at it.”

“Careful, there, girlie. I’m very good at my job.” He grinned. “As you may have been able to ascertain yourself.”

She crossed her arms at him.

“Open a matchmaking place, then. After you retire.”

Buccaneer’s whole chest seemed to stop moving for a second, and she was momentarily afraid that he, in his terribly not old age, had just had a stroke or something. Then she realized it wasn’t an affliction, but shock at what she’d said. Was he … retiring any time soon or something? Wasn’t that a good thing, too?

“No need to be so aggressive, kid,” he said. “This is what life is like here at Briggs, I thought you knew.”

“Oh, I know, alright. But don’t you have more couples to pester?” she almost begged. “What’s the name of the guy that asked another out in the shower? Um… ”

“Madsen,” Buccaneer said at once. “I don’t just engage in any _matchmaking_. There’s nothing in it for me, kid.”

“And there was something in it in _this_ or something?”

Buccaneer looked her in the eye and quit playing around.

“No other couple getting together benefits people I care about.”

Zinnia stopped on her tracks. “So you’re doing this out of the goodness in your heart, to make us happy?”

He nodded and she just thought to herself: _Fuck, he really means it._ It made sense that Buccaneer’s love language was meddling intensively.

“That’s one way to look at it.”

Zinnia buried her face in her hands and groaned.

“Doesn’t it?” he asked. “Make you happy? You’re happy, she’s happy… and no one’s being yelled at.”

“Kinda. But—I mean…it’s not your happiness to command. We’ve done this at _your_ pace—the pace you wanted for us—and now I have no clue what to do.” She glared at him, knowing full well this meant belaying her own discretion rules. Olivier would kill her for it. “And I _shouldn’t_ be telling you this.”

Buccaneer smiled like a dad. Which in a way he’d always been. Oldest of them all, Buccaneer knew more than he let on, and he used that information as well he could.

“Look, people are simple when you look at them. I, for one, wouldn’t mind a bit of payment in the form of _free_ time, if you know what I mean. Kitchen wastes half of my day.”

She rolled her eyes but let him continue.

“In any case, back to people, that woman…” His face contorted, as if he was thinking about some hard to solve puzzle. “Oh well, yeah, she’s pretty hard to read, ain’t she?” He laughed loudly. “Guess you’re on your own.”

“Aaaaaand back to our scheduled screaming,” Zinnia muttered to herself before she did scream at him: “You can be excited all you want about your little project, but now the little project’s flown away from you and it won’t come back, so you’d better get your hands on something else, are we clear?”

He just kept laughing.

“Especially since I can’t tell you how to crack the code that is the general.”

“Right.” 

* * *

 

Buccaneer, even though he’d tried his damnest not to laugh in Zinnia’s face during her little speech, was behaving quite spectacularly during lunch. He’d taken a seat with everyone else, just gorging on food while his ears absorbed today’s talk about the density of the mashed potatoes, the insipid weather that allowed for basic maintenance tasks, and the fact that it was _always—_ and that ‘always’ was uttered markedly—good to have an extra person working in something. At that, Buccaneer had directly ogled Zinnia with big beady eyes, but she’d pretended she was more interested in the conversation than finding out he thought it was about her.

Which it turned out in the end to be, because Buccaneer might have been silent, but his clique still hadn’t gotten the news that the gossiping needed to take a more subtle change from now on if they all wanted to conserve their noses.

Austin and the younger men were surprised with her sudden decision to _not_ abandon them for warmer regions, or so they said, although they didn’t look that surprised to her.

Some shrugged, and Austin just said: “Nice to have another pair of hands around. Practical.”

Buccaneer tried to look up at him and maybe dare to say something but Zinnia’s perfectly fake outer resolve calmed him down and forced him to reconsider.

She snorted softly.

“You could handle yourselves perfectly well and you know that,” Zinnia said. This was just becoming an old game that never ended, like chess when one was reduced to play with just a king and a pawn.

They tugged at her, even if she let them tug, and tried to orchestrate things so the gossip wouldn’t die and their boss would be happy and content. If only they knew maybe Zinnia had been her greatest headache, they would have stopped trying ages ago.

Although she had to admit… when seen from the outside it must have been fun to play around like gods and hope for beautiful consequences, like only mediocre gods hoped for.

“One more patroller means we get more hours to sleep,” Buccaneer said at last. And she could tell he’d bitten his tongue a little.

“Sleeping is so important, yes,” Zinnia commented went along, smirking to herself. None of them wouldn’t say what they were thinking about all of this. They had to rationalize it into work benefits.

_Honestly, these people need to chill a little,_ she thought. _And maybe so do I?_ After all, she was playing around, too, faking the image and behavior of a rough soldier from the mountains when all she’d be is a town girl who liked weird things and people when they were at a reasonable distance.

“Haven’t you thought about joining the military?” someone else asked, clearly only seeing the rough soldier she was channeling through her slightly deeper voice and her squared shoulders—which were beginning to hurt.

“And spend my life dressed like this? No, thanks.”

“You’d follow the best of the best,” Austin commented in what he meant to be an innocent tone that she almost broke character at.

_Seriously?_ They were getting into dangerous grounds now, they were almost letting it slip.

“And learn to shoot like a man.”

She raised her eyebrow. She wasn’t precisely the best at aiming, but she was always quick to hit something. And right now there were a few necks begging to be targets of a good slap.

Zinnia took a sip of her water as if it were beer.

“No need,” she said. “Shooting like a woman is fine. One of the best soldiers alive is one, after all.”

After that, there were a few uncomfortable glances between the men, and Zinnia smiled to herself. That was all it took, wasn’t it? And they could’ve used it against her, but maybe she’d been smart to use this card now and in this very manner.

No one in this fort would ever dare speak evil of Olivier Armstrong.

“It’s not like we’re all born knowing how to shoot,” Austin said after a while in a small voice, trying to smile comfortably at Zinnia. “But I’m sure she could learn faster than any of us.”

“Do I have any choice?” she said with a smirk, her voice definitely now evoking Olivier’s when she got into her professional angry mode. The men were responding well to it, the chuckles that followed confirmed that they liked this more than she did. They didn’t exactly expect it of her—or at least of the girl they’d seen wandering among them before. Were things to be any different now they knew she wasn’t going anywhere?

Would things change even _more_ when word got out that she was dating their … boss, to put it like Buccaneer would?

Or would she just be accepted as one more of them? She worked hard like they did, had trained to be able to handle herself out on the patrols the same way they did, and she’d definitely earned the spot she slept in. A privileged spot in many ways more than one that… separated her from them, in the end.

But Zinnia didn’t want to be a man of Briggs. She’d wanted in into its heart and she’d slowly mellowed the iron walls around it. Now, it was another question entirely to know what she would do with it once she had it.

Because that heart had long hands as well.

“Gotta go, folks,” she said after a while. “Places to be, equipment to clean, guns to shoot.”

She winked at them and disappeared as quickly as she could behind an aura of faked resolve that hadn’t been too unpleasant to acquire.

Only when she’d crossed and closed the door that led to the kitchens did she realize that now she was to walk into a lair she couldn’t escape because she’d agreed to enter it of her own free will.

_It is night, the curtain falls. And all our vulnerabilities come forth,_ she thought philosophically. _And today I’m meant to stay, en garde, and hit hard. Perfect plan, yes._

She could channel a bit more of that tough lady energy just for a little longer. Minutes would suffice. It was night, the curtain’s fall was to follow, and all she’d pretend to be would vanish before Olivier’s very eyes.

“Day fucking one,” Zinnia muttered to herself as she opened the door and walked in. Her footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the room, and the memories inside it that were still waiting to be picked up in gentle hands.

Zinnia shooed them away.

There were things in that place that tugged at her more exquisitely than any man of Briggs ever would in his desperate try at matchmaking. Memories and possibilities all in one room. And all the feelings that came with it and stayed within, what was she supposed to do with them?

She knew well by now that Olivier wasn’t the only one who channeled negative emotions through physical exertion. Zinnia hadn’t really done it consciously before, maybe she would now, if only not to succumb of the beauties of being trained by the, as the men had put it, best of the best.

Zinnia would be a danger to the world once inside that gymnasium and she found that she didn’t care. It was time to stop feeling guilty for things she had no control over. Now she had been given the green light to _own_ her feelings, and to act upon them.

_Once you have what you want, how do you learn how to want it properly?_

Looking around the place and trying not to let the memories take over, Zinnia removed her jacket and hung it somewhere. A smile crept all the way up from her belly to her face when she saw the very patch of dry floor where once she’d dreamed about her present life.

_Ah, no one ever really learns how, do they?_  

* * *

 

Buccaneer walked into the room to run into a half-naked Miles lifting more weight than there even was in his tree-like body. Buccaneer had a very unusual routine here, he basically just punched things and touched up his metal arm while he eavesdropped, but he couldn’t help but come closer to Miles, especially in light of this morning’s conversation.

“Are you over your ridiculous grumpiness?” he said in place of all greeting.

“Yes.”

“Then why aren’t you talking to me?”

“I’m busy working out?”

Buccaneer blinked flirtily. “Oh, Miles, do you like me? Are you afraid I might refuse you?”

Miles stopped doing his routine for a second.

“Can’t you just be normal? For one day,” he said. “Just one day, Buccaneer.”

Buccaneer grinned and got the boxing gloves out. “You’d get bored.”

Miles sighed.

“There is no literal room in this place for that to happen. We need another storm…”

Buccaneer chuckled, “Who knows what new disasters that would bring…. You might even _kiss_ me.”

Miles was about to say something very improper of him about Buccaneer’s mother when Buccaneer’s head literally turned towards the wall and he brought a finger to his lips as he walked on tiptoe towards it, leaving his gloves behind.

“You’re ridiculous.”

Buccaneer shushed him.

“C’mere.”

“What? No.”

“Miles!” Buccaneer hissed. “Come the _fuck_ here.”

Miles dropped his weights and did, chest bared and sweating. He looked at Buccaneer, panting a little and his quirked eyebrow a good a mark as any of his inquisitiveness.

“ _Listen_ ,” Buccaneer said when Miles didn’t react visibly.

If only to shut him up sooner, Miles pressed his right ear against the wall, fighting not to roll his eyes for the umpteenth time today, and then he opened them wide.

It sounded as if… two people were either working out like he had been or… indulging in much more private activities.

He prayed to whoever was listening that it wasn’t who he thought it was—and who Buccaneer had already assumed it was. 

* * *

 

Zinnia had been about to land her final hit, the one that would crown her climber of the mountain and queen of wrestling. It had surged in her chest like lava. She was doing it, she was defeating the unbeatable queen of the ice, and it wasn’t even _being_ that hard.

In the next heartbeat, though, Olivier had already grabbed her by the arm to stop her from landing anything and had pulled her close at once in a challenge, and a definite sign of victory.

_Damn it…_ But Olivier would never let her win. She had to earn it.

“You’ll never beat me like this.”

A few more breaths, a pile of more seconds, and Olivier’s grip on her was just as decided. Zinnia composed herself. A victory wasn’t supposed to be celebrated until it was secured. And Olivier was standing at nothing but her own will to win, which right now amounted to so very little…

“I’ll beat anyone just slightly less practiced than you,” Zinnia counterattacked, right arm grasping at Olivier’s left to show her that past this point two could play at this.

“Show me, then,” Olivier challenged her.

Zinnia narrowed her eyes and widened her smirk. _Oh, really?_ If she wanted to play, Zinnia still had a few aces up her sleeve that had nothing to do with finally beating her in combat. That might still be ages away for all she knew, but she was _very_ good at other things that she maybe shouldn’t make use of lightly but didn’t especially care to at the moment.

The smirk was a warning, and Olivier only realized it when it was already too late to recoil. Victory? How about abysmal failure? How about she stopped trying and just let go?

When Zinnia robbed her of that sought-for victory and her coherence, Olivier could just abandon herself to the traitor’s kiss.

A low move, but one of the best. Besides, she needed to let go a little. She couldn’t not let go.

And as briskly as Zinnia had kissed her, she moved away, grinned like a fool, and smoothed the fabric of her pants.

_She will be the death of me,_ Olivier thought.

She’d planned to die here up north, still standing in front of a titan nation for her country and her men. She would have liked to be buried in the common cemetery with the rest of the fallen, and she would have liked to die with honor in battle. She hadn’t even minded about the when. It could have happened any time, any day, in any circumstances. Olivier had learned to expect nothing of her job and of her life, things changed too quickly to be traced appropriately. Even the best strategists made mistakes and age would only make that worse, make her slower and slower every day.

On her first day as Major General, with so many people in her direct care and so many others to keep from being invaded, she had first felt it. The weight of the crown, the importance that she bore it well, and how much this place meant to her after all those years she’d been in its shadow. _If anything comes to happen to me,_ Olivier had said during her first official speech in the Drachman Wars, before battle broke out and only one thing started to matter, _bury me under this fort. I'm going to haunt whoever fails to hold the border._

In a way, it had sort of become the unofficial motto of her leadership years. No one here would ever question the idea of Olivier’s ghost remaining after her demise to remind them which tasks they were expected to perform flawlessly and why.

She’d planned to die where she stood that day and every day before that. And it would be impossible now. Zinnia would be the one to put an end to the general in her. Wasn’t she doing it this very second, those eyelashes committing all kinds of treason just by fluttering?

Her body, though, could still always rest at the border. And her ghost would never fail to haunt whoever newbies the new generals sent to Briggs. It had always been this way, it would always be, even after she was gone.

But that was so far away now. She couldn’t even remember why it mattered, and why it would matter still when she opened her eyes and the moment passed.

“I think I just won a war or two,” Zinnia commented casually.

“I think you’re a…” And Olivier found that she had no words to stay because she’d lost then in those brown eyes and the promise of being buried in them for just a few seconds.

She was a teenager in the body of a grown woman, scared and lost and much too willing to overlook that. So many touches and so much banter words had gotten lost in the past few years, Olivier had forgotten how it felt to stand before someone who could use them well on her.

_Today I am the fool, and she’s the one training me,_ she thought feebly. Then, she realized: _And I have no idea how to turn it around this time._

“ _Do_ go on,” Zinnia said.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” Olivier was finally able to say. Dignified and calm, she tried to think coherently. If she let herself dwell in what was going on rather than in how she could still control at least a part of it, this would be over too soon and she would be the fool a lot longer than she’d planned.

Zinnia’s smirk grew wider, as if she’d seen into it. “Still won.”

Olivier brought a finger up to tap Zinnia’s chin.

“Don’t be cocky,” she said. “In a fair match, you would have lost.”

“Life’s not fair,” Zinnia said as she pulled away, deliberately disentangling herself from it all a lot slower than usual so it would entice certain feelings on the other woman—or so she hoped.

Olivier bit her lower lip just as slowly as Zinnia moved away.

_Did she just…?_

And she had. Pulled away and walked away in pristine calmness, as if none of this affected her. And Olivier couldn’t just pretend like it hadn’t absolutely elevated the register of the game.

She followed Zinnia’s footsteps until she was level with her, and then she gave a firm and definitely daring kiss to the right corner of Zinnia’s lips, hand slightly brushing with her.

“All wars lead to new ones,” Olivier said enigmatically.

“This isn’t a war, this is just…” Zinnia shrugged chirpily. “Conflict.”

“A conflict which can be _easily_ resolved,” Olivier purred.

“Not gonna fight you again. Because I’ll probably lose and I need to enjoy this ego boost a little longer.”

Finally, it was Olivier’s turn to smirk.

“I wasn’t talking about _fighting._ ”

And that was how Zinnia lost twice in the span of a few minutes. One could say no to winning when you were being offered such an interesting deal on the side…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bury me under this fort. I'm going to haunt whoever fails to hold the border." This quote belongs to the wonderful Artemispolarbear <3 (thank you for our many many talks about writing and fandoms ily)


	32. The flower girl

Olivier had no reason to be checking the noticeboards other that she was incredibly bored and had no desire to look at numbers that she remembered had made sense at some point in her life. Buccaneer might as well have done a wonderful job at them, she would never have known. All she could think of was her pounding heart, which shouldn’t have been _pounding_ so early in the day and for no reason at all.

Except, well, maybe… the morning sights.

But now she was reading the noticeboards Miles worked at under her tutelage as if her entire life depended on it. He truly did his best at fitting every name in the minimum space, so as to save paper, and she had to squint to read them all properly.

She might walk around after that, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. She didn’t doubt they would, she just needed an alibi in case she got caught wandering.

_Now I’m looking for excuses. Grand. This year will truly go down in history as the year that thawed the ice wall of Briggs._

She didn’t feel especially proud of it. She could always just frost it back to its original state someday. If she was able to, then. If she was allowed to by her circumstance.

_Zinnia Erwin,_ read the little meticulous scribble Miles called handwriting. _1-6 shift._

_That explains why she’s still sleeping._ Olivier had woken up first, as it was already usual in her, and hadn’t had the heart to rouse the girl. She was growing soft, thawing and soft, and soon she’d be as tender as chicken breast. If Drachma thought to invade now (which they wouldn’t, owing to their cowardice and fear), Olivier was sure she might even consider diplomacy before firing any canons at them.

All because of a girl who had overslept because she was to witness the life-changing shift all soldiers at Briggs had tried to bribe Miles to get, despite the hours it comprised.

Olivier hadn’t wanted anything to do with that shift, back when she had still been doing rotations, until she’d been assigned to for the first time. You didn’t just recover from that sunrise. Hers hadn’t been in the winter, and its beauty had merged with that of the season blooming slowly as the ice melted into rivers. Zinnia would get to see winter as it was meant to be seen, first cold and dark as its nature suggested, then slowly being bathed by light and slight warmth; a contradiction worth losing sleep for. Sometimes the light even created rainbows in the air.

Hands behind her back, Olivier finally began moving towards the stairs and left the noticeboard behind. It had been a while since she’d been able to treat herself to that sunrise.

She might as well just _go_ with her, right? An extra pair of eyes in the blizzards of winter might spot the difference between a tree branch and a rifle hidden in the snow. Plus, Zinnia would be all alone on top of the wall for a few hours, freezing her butt off, and Olivier wouldn’t really sleep much in her room. She might as well _really_ just go, if only to help Zinnia out in her first dawn shift.

She told herself that as she changed course, walking back to her office to tell Miles she was ‘taking the rest of the day off’ and he could handle anything that came up, which it wouldn’t. Things were quiet lately.

Afterwards, she headed straight for her room. She found it empty (thankfully, she couldn’t have stood a conversation about this with Zinnia herself), and got on the bed, not bothering to get under the covers.

She closed her eyes with a smile.

This would be fun. 

* * *

 

Today’s training had been especially mild, Olivier had been almost on a cloud, or so it had seemed. Zinnia had gained a few new extra bruises on her thighs from sparring, but aside from that it’d mostly been a quiet practice, and she was grateful. If the intensity had been any higher, she’d definitely have to bail on writing so she could rest her head for the night shift. Zinnia hadn’t napped in too long, she was not starting now.

But she did kind of leave the library—her new, almost secret and definitely memory inducing writing place—with the idea to have a long shower, or maybe even a bath, before dinner and sleeping a little prior to her shift. She knew that it was pretty much going to be a few hours of sitting around doing nothing, so she wasn’t that worried about staying alert as she normally would. Her mind was on warm water and steam.

_I wonder if we have bubbly soap somewhere, I’ll have to ask,_ she hadn’t yet because she’d never had the option of a relaxing bath. Nor enough confidence to huddle the big tub all for herself. Nor the lack of given fucks to literally bathe in front of lines and lines of naked men showering around her.

Things really did change with time, and it was perceptible in decisions like this one. Today, at least, the bath would have to wait; she needed to pick up a clean change of clothes.

So she headed upstairs while everyone else was already queuing for a first dish of whatever was being served in the kitchens, already visualizing herself reading something in the tub.

She passed a few friends—was she allowed to call them friends? Acquaintances?—on the way and smiled mysteriously. Nobody asked where she was going, and she puffed up a little so they wouldn’t think she was a tiny lost sheep again.

She yawned when she opened the door of the room, thinking herself alone, and when she unglued her eyes again she saw a huge lump of blue on the bed.

“What on earth…?” Zinnia muttered, biting her lip so she wouldn’t laugh out loud. “Someone slept little last night…”

This time she did let out a small chuckle. This was completely out of the ordinary: Olivier, napping. It should be on national news, accompanied by a picture of her messy hair, practically a blanket all on its own, and her feet dangling from the bed because she was a ball of a human right now.

Giggling to herself, Zinnia picked up her own blanket from the mattress on the floor and kicked the mattress aside with her foot to tiptoe closer to the bed and gently cover Olivier with the blanket. Slowly, Olivier got her feet back on the bed, and Zinnia smiled, content. Mission warmth: completed successfully.

She watched Olivier get comfortable in dreams for a few seconds, she couldn’t help it. The object of her corniest feelings was there, sleeping in what seemed to be a level beyond peace, and Zinnia was supposed to act like this wasn’t tugging at her heartstrings?

Zinnia leaned in and readjusted the blanket so it would cover Olivier’s shoulders, and her hand lingered when she did.

That was when the plan went south.

Still half-asleep, Olivier opened her eyes and blinked to get rid of the drowsiness that had flooded her brain.

“What are you doing here, flower girl?” she asked.

“Flower, _what_?” Had Zinnia heard right? Maybe Olivier was still half-asleep and not entirely aware of who she was with, and Zinnia would have killed to believe that, but she had no time to.

“…fuck,” was Olivier’s only answer as she pushed the so-carefully strewn blanket away and sat up, fully awake now.

“Did you just call me _flower girl_?” Zinnia stuttered loudly.

And Olivier had no justification that would work.

“The first time I saw you you had flowers in your dress.”

_She remembers?_ Zinnia thought. She honestly didn’t know what to focus on. That… form of endearment that was just weird in every level, the fact that her flowery dresses were the reason for it, and that apparently they were so because Olivier had paid attention on her first day to Zinnia school. Zinnia just shook her head to clear it.

“Do I have them on me now?” Zinnia threw her hands up in the air. “I’m wearing military blue!” Which, in the right light, had become the very same thing for her that her own dresses had been for Olivier. But she was in no mood to acknowledge how hypocritical that would be, admitting that she thought of Olivier in terms of color most days. Blue and yellow. Gold for her hair and teal for her eyes.

“I told you I wouldn’t object to a change on that front.”

“Flower girl. You had all the vernacular in the _world_ to choose from, you could have called me ‘city girl’ like Buccaneer does sometimes, but no. Flower girl, it had to be. Have I ever told you how much I despise flowers?” That last part was definitely an angry whisper.

Olivier just grinned like a fool because when she slept without needing it it always took her a while to remember that smiles were much too personal for her taste.

“I’m not apologizing,” she said, clearly finding it funny.

“Then call me anything else. Or I’ll keep flashbacking to sneezing and pollen and we’re going to have a problem.” Zinnia made an adorable pouty face that only made Olivier’s smile grow bigger.

Even if she wasn’t dreaming anymore, she couldn’t stop smiling.

“Shall I call you by your name, then?” Olivier said slowly. Zinnia immediately knew what was coming and her entire skin prickled in anticipation. “Zinnia…?”

Zinnia felt shivers down her spine and had to immediately do something about the situation at hand so she wouldn’t want to be pinned against a bed for the remainder of the day.

“No, okay, fine. Flower girl’s fine. No names. I’m just going to let you… go back to what you were doing.”

She just grabbed a clean change of her uniform and headed to the showers, but she was unable to soak in the water as calmly as she’d imagined she would. She kept replaying the image in her head of the dress she’d worn the first time she’d set foot in the north and imagined she’d set fire to it. It had flowers on it, but flowers had always been innocuous to her unless they were literally in her presence—now, though, the flowers were in her name.

* * *

 

The alarm clock rang out of nowhere, at a different time than Zinnia was used to, and it felt like a tear in reality. She cracked an eye open, refusing to move from the bed just yet, and she saw that there was no light coming in from the outside world.

_Still night…_ She closed her eyes again, stilling her breathing.

Then she moved like a resort to sit on the mattress.

_Fuck, I’m supposed to be up tonight._  She got dressed at the speed of light, not even noticing that the mattress next to her own was empty, and as soon as she closed the door and turned on the light of the corridor to quickly run upstairs, Zinnia gave the biggest startle of her life.

“What in the name of blessed sleep are you doing up?” Zinnia squeaked.

“Waiting for you,” Olivier just stated calmly. “You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry, by the way.”

Zinnia’s face tried to contort into several different expressions at the same time, and eventually she just had to shake her head to erase all of them and settle for ‘don’t you dare’.

“You’re going to punish me for being late?”

“Yes.”

“The wall’s not going to _move…_ ” Zinnia grumbled as she stomped forward.

Olivier couldn’t hide her amusement for the life of her. Someone didn’t deal well with an interrupted night’s sleep. Soon, when Zinnia had already waited around for a few hours, she would see the light. Literally. And the effort would have been worth Olivier’s while.

Olivier followed quietly, just thinking of the dawn and how beautiful it would be to witness that with her. It didn’t strike her as unusual, either, to be using the word ‘beautiful’.

They got into an elevator, because at this hour there wouldn’t be much traffic waiting to use them. The only people who were up were the ones patrolling, and the ones who kept watch inside wouldn’t really move from their assigned floors.

Zinnia yawned, leaning at the corner of the lift so she wouldn’t have to held herself up all on her own.

“When I said that about you and I doing something,” she said, “I didn’t mean you’d… _you know_.”

“Oh, you think I’m doing this for you?”

“No, you’re doing it for _you_ , I’m just saying it’s weird.” Zinnia yawned again.

Olivier smiled. “Grumpy.”

“It’s literally one in the morning. And I just woke up. Grumpy is all you’re gonna get,” Zinnia teased, definitely not grumpily.

When the doors opened and the gusts of cold wind hit her face, Zinnia’s sleep was smacked out of her. She said a quick ‘hey’ to the two men guarding the area around the elevator and watched as they stood up a little straighter when they saw who she had come with.

Their footsteps crunched against the snow piled on the floor and the sound of the wind pooling and moving and whistling overtook everything else.

“I’ll never get over how beautiful this is,” Zinnia commented. For a while, until they’d reached her allotted spot, neither spoke. Then: “You really didn’t have to come all the way here. I know how to keep watch.”

“I’ve been told this particular spot is more agreeable with company.”

Zinnia turned around a little. “I believe those two back there won’t be that far away. They can be company.”

Olivier frowned, displeased. “If you want me to leave, just say so.”

“I’d feel bad if I did,” Zinnia replied. Shocked as she was, because she’d certainly not been expecting it, she could appreciate the gesture. Olivier would very well be either working on whatever it was she spent so much time on or she could already be in bed, resting. And yet she was here, in the cold and ready to remain there for the upcoming five hours. Zinnia had to at least reciprocate that a little. “It’s nice of you anyway.”

“Despite what Buccaneer might say, I am very nice.”

Zinnia erupted into laughter.

“No, you’re not. You’re the least nice person I’ve ever met.”

Olivier wrinkled her brow.

“ _But_ nice is not everything in life,” Zinnia continued. “I definitely didn’t stick this out for ‘nice’.”

“ _Why_ exactly did you, then? And I don’t just mean after I … clarified things.”

“I guess I just… kept lying to myself about what was going on. I kept telling myself I wasn’t waiting around for anything.” Zinnia looked down at her boots in the snow. “But I guess I was, in the end.”

“And before? Was it always just… defiance?” Olivier asked. She might as well just keep on asking, finding answers and pretending they didn’t make her heart settle into a feeling quite like contentment. “I must admit… I’ve always been somewhat curious about it.” Inadvertently, she had switched into her formal mode, as if this was just another discussion about something important. She felt she might explode if she let her true emotions show in the conversation.

“I can’t believe I’m going to have to say this to you.” Zinnia giggled. “No, it wasn’t just defiance. I wrote you… _stuff._ I wrote you stuff, of course it wasn’t just a game to me: ‘I say this, you say that, and at the end of the day someone wins’. Not that I didn’t like winning—and maybe even losing, on a good day. I just… All I had to do was be there and then eventually you would be too. And for a while that was enough.”

Olivier nodded. “Until I took you here, fed you and clothed you and—

“It wasn’t about the setting or the circumstances. I could’ve—” Then, in a much smaller, forced voice Zinnia finished the thought: “—developed a thing for you anywhere in the world.”

“I wouldn’t be me anywhere in the world, I hope you’re aware of that.”

Suddenly, Zinnia just sat on the snowy edge of the wall, and Olivier didn’t have time to warn her about the dangers of slipping into the abyss. She just did the same thing after some seconds, sitting on Zinnia’s left to try and shield her a little from the wind.

“Do I sound _cold_ to you?” Olivier asked.

Zinnia cocked her head as she thought about it. “You sound to me like someone who’s lived a long, hard life. Not necessarily a bad thing.” She looked at her. “But… is it?”

Olivier laughed. “Are you asking me if my life is hard?”

“Well… yeah,” Zinnia said, not sure if that question had been the right one. “I don’t know much about you other than the … obvious.” _And the much too private that I can’t even think about without blushing._ “I figure it’s about time I crack the code of you.” _To quote Buccaneer._

Olivier smirked softly. “I’m not that complicated, I assure you. What do you want to know?”

Zinnia thought about it. She wanted to ask something that felt important enough but that wouldn’t develop into something she wouldn’t know how to step out of.

“You said you hadn’t done this recently,” Zinnia said in the end. “Any… activity worth noting?”

Olivier was torn between wanting to laugh at her wording and the fact that she had, indeed, asked it so ambiguously.

The memories weren’t all kind to evoke. Many, many moments spent in a hurry, never focusing on any feelings she might have had, and then when she finally had… she’d been forced by circumstance to let it go. She got to talk about it, now. For the first time in fifteen years. Was it worth it?

But she saw complete understanding and patience in Zinnia’s eyes, clear as day in the middle of the night. And she didn’t fear telling this story now, not like she once might have.

“I was with someone, time ago. The only _one_ worth mentioning right now.” Olivier quickly glanced at Zinnia to assess whether she was approaching this question too narrowly. “Or do you want to hear about the one-night stands too?”

“No,” Zinnia said, almost chuckling at the thought of sitting there in the bitter cold and getting to hear how Olivier Armstrong liked to fool around in her younger years, when she hadn’t had this duty resting upon her shoulders.

“Okay, so there was this girl, Ianthe. Don’t ask me to spell it, I’ve probably forgotten how.” _Liar,_ Olivier’s inner voice counterattacked. She sighed. “I met her while I was in the academy, she lived close to the building where I trained. And… well,” Another curious look and a smirk shifted her face, Zinnia didn’t know whether to prepare for it or just pretend it wasn’t something that would shock her. “Are you sure you wanna hear it?”

“Yeah, just go ahead. Can’t be that bad.”

_Oh, but it is, flower girl._ And it was much worse than Zinnia could imagine, which only made Olivier’s invisible smirk begin to sprout on her lips.

“It was _sex_ at first sight.”

“Oh god…”

Olivier just smiled.

She still remembered that time, fresh as dew in her memories. Ianthe had never been with someone who didn’t shave their legs, and Olivier had never been with someone who did. It had been interesting. Very much so. Especially because the shaving issue hadn’t just been leg-bound. Very interesting, indeed.

If Olivier ever returned to Central, she’d have no trouble finding the exact spot where they’d … met. That wall in the shadows of a street that smelled like baked goods and powdered sugar. And from there on, she’d only have to follow the streets, hand on the worn walls, and she would eventually make it the house where she had been at her happiest, once. Maybe, if she ever returned, she would find the essence of the much more carefree Olivier still giggling there in the grass, alongside with Ianthe’s lost and surrendered love. She had lost that forever, and she’d thought she wouldn’t care.

_Fifteen years later and you still do_ , she thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.

“I kept seeing her around, and I guess I just started flirting with her, and she with me.” In fact, Ianthe had been the one to catch her in her flirting nets. Olivier had been apt at a few moves, mostly the ones that meant just a hook-up or two, but Ianthe had known what she’d been doing all too well. “And we just … fell into place, I suppose.”

“People don’t just fall into place. What did you do? Ask her out?” Zinnia had a thought and laughed, then voiced it. “Take her to a shooting session or something? That’s popular with the girls, I hear.”

Olivier remembered the first few encounters that fit more into a storybook romance and ignored Zinnia’s joke. “I tried the usual courtship method via flowers. And in the moment that she opened her door I realized how stupid a plan it was to try and give plant corpses to a botanist.” Zinnia had to cover her mouth, and Olivier didn’t make her wait too long to hear the foreseeable conclusion to that anecdote: “She threw them in my face.”

“Sounds like my kind of gal.”

“Except for the liking flowers part.”

“Well, yeah.”

Olivier sighed. “It was all … normal, I suppose. She introduced me to her parents, and we mostly spent all of my free time in her house.”

Ianthe had been studying botany outside of school, thinking about possible careers in the future, and she’d always had time. Time had never been a problem for her.

Zinnia suddenly remembered what Olivier had said about her own family. “And never in your own place, right?”

A place which she incidentally imagined as a castle on a hill. All yellow and blue, a place most people didn’t have access to.

“Once or twice, at the most.” Olivier felt it was time to tell her. She would never have to take _this_ home, because she had never returned, but the story of old censorships had been on the tip of her tongue for too long now. “My parents don’t know that I’m not interested in men. They wouldn’t approve.” And it didn’t escape Zinnia that she’d said it as if the situation hadn’t changed at all. “Mostly my mother.”

Olivier’s father had lived too much in his own perception of reality. He would probably just have started arranging marriages for her with high-born women instead of men.

“I remember, yeah,” Zinnia said, grinding her teeth. Her own mother had been… far from the perfect parent, but at least there had never been a word out of place about Zinnia being bisexual. “What happened with Ianthe, after?”

It felt weird to have Zinnia speaking Ianthe’s name, like the birth of a parallel universe.

“Why didn’t you two… continue?” she finished her question.

“I was sent north so I’d stay out of trouble. It was a common practice with troublesome soldiers back in my day—still is, I believe.”

“Troublesome soldier, were you?”

“Just a woman in a world of men. Which is, apparently, a punishable offense.”

Zinnia shut up. She’d had to put up with some sexist comments not that long ago, and she could only imagine what they must have done to a young girl who had the talent and the skills to become one of the best in the Amestrian military, all on account of her gender.

“I came here on orders, back when the war was still a war and not a so-called truce. And I…” Olivier paused to think whether she should perpetuate the lie she had back in the day or if she should tell the truth.

  _Base your relationship on the solid base of honesty and you won’t need to lie around anything again. Base it on lies, no matter who small, and prepare yourself for an intricate web of them you don’t ever really get rid of._

Olivier exhaled slowly. Her one and only real relationship had come to its abrupt end because of a lie, this one should start off with the truth. However small a truth that was. “And I couldn’t involve her any further.”

Zinnia gulped. “Oh. How… how old were you?”

“Twenty.” Olivier anticipated the question. “Fifteen years ago.”

Fifteen years in a fort, free and not trapped. But still isolated, her own feelings frozen with the ice in the mountains. It had been long enough.

“Yeah, okay, that counts as long ago. Longer than me, anyway.”

“How old are you, Zinnia?” Olivier asked in return.

“28 going on 29.” She didn’t have the heart to say that this particularly uneven 29 bothered her a little with its proximity, looking over her when she had no control over when it came to stay.

Olivier was satisfied with Zinnia’s answer. She had thought so. That youth was still prevalent, not entirely gone, but the main core of it remained alive in the flower girl, even if it grew smaller by the minute. Rather than youth, perhaps, she should have called it innocence in the face of hardship.

The silence gave Zinnia the impression that she could keep talking and Olivier would listen. She gave clues on that front, always silently, if not curtly through words, but definitely there.

She decided to tell her own first story.

“I was still living with my parents.” Zinnia had been a child, proper, when Anthony and her had fallen in soft, sweet love. She told it all briefly, because it didn’t matter as much as it once had, and so Olivier listened to the tale of Anthony, the lifeboat and iceberg, for the first time. A summer romance turned solid for almost a year. Then, the flame had gone out inside Zinnia. She remembered that, too, but tonight all she wanted to bring back was the beginning of it, the happiness of it. “Gosh, that was almost as long as it was for you.” She laughed. “Twelve years. I hadn’t even realized it’d been that long.”

Olivier laughed softly too. Twelve and fifteen years, and then had come the voids they had managed to fill on their own.

“The ‘long’ maybe isn’t as important as the ‘when’,” Olivier said, philosophically. “I was a child myself. At that age, you know little and think it will suffice to take you however far you wish to go.” She scoffed and said, in a softer voice, admitting to personal things rather than speaking in general: “Now I know even less than then, at least regarding personal relationships.”

It didn’t go unnoticed to Zinnia that it was hard for her to be talking about this so openly. No wonder why, either. It had to take a toll on you, to live so far away from a normal environment, to have distanced yourself from family and friends, all in the name of a cause. It was noble, but Zinnia thought it a high price to pay. And the fact that Olivier was bringing it up with her, who she barely knew, was nothing short of praise.

“If it helps, I can tell you something a little more on the personal side, too: I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman before,” Zinnia said conversationally. Then she blushed, and added: “Properly, anyway. There was a girl, time ago, but we were never anything because I was too scared to ask her out in time.”

Olivier smirked. “Reminds me of something.”

As it could be no other way, because that smirk was self-explanatory, Zinnia realized that, indeed, if Olivier hadn’t taken matters into her own hands, none of them would be on top of this fort right now.

Her blush intensified.

“I’m a chicken, okay? I won’t risk it if there’s a chance I’m going to be publicly humiliated about feelings. And you can imagine why I thought it farfetched that a general of the Amestris military would look twice at me, let alone reciprocate… anything.”

“Well, look at us…” And Zinnia did, and she found that they had grown closer as they spoke, fighting the cold by connecting through body heat. “Not as farfetched as either of us deemed it.”

“I find it hard to believe you don’t know how _stunning_ you are. Half your men are in love with you.” As per usual, Zinnia realized what she’d said only when she’d already said it and there was no possibly way in the world she could erase the words from Olivier’s brain.

_Shit._

She saw the smirk on Olivier’s face spread to her eyes as well at the poorly veiled compliment.

“I doubt it.”

“I find it had to believe you don’t know how stunning everyone _finds_ you,” Zinnia corrected herself, even if it was too late. “That, plus the sword and the …” She admitted it because she might as well. “ _Height._ ”

“I’m the smallest Armstrong,” Olivier said, teasing only a little.

“You’re the—oh okay. That’s… Makes sense. Yeah. The smallest Armstrong, are you sure that’s right? I would probably faint if I ever met any member of your family, then. I can’t handle that much tall. How many siblings do you even have? You mentioned siblings at some… point, I think.”

“Four,” Olivier reminded her. In her head, she heard a different numeral. _Three._ Three but four. And that would be too long an explanation and too painful a remembrance for such a night. A night that should end in the dawn that captivated every soul, even the ones from Central, not at a mention of her so-called brother, the deserter.

_Alex…_ Olivier thought. The one who had brought dishonor and betrayal. And they were but two sides of the same coin—Olivier had dishonored the Armstrong family by failing to adhere to its ideals and found what little solace she could in the military and Alex, the apple of his parents’ eye, had failed an entire institution in the course of a day yet had still preserved the love and admiration of his family.

As far as she knew, he was still living at the family home, the only adult Armstrong sibling who did. The last man standing.

But Zinnia knew none of that and, indeed, there would be plenty of time to break more family secrets to her another day. Winters were long, after all.

“I couldn’t even imagine, I’m an only child. What is it even like to grow up with so many brothers and sisters?”

_Lonelier than you’d think._

Hadn’t Olivier chosen truth? Then why was she lying now? Or was keeping information even considered a lie? It was just an omission, and this time her reason for being here justified it.

“I’m not even sure I could tell you. The eldest after me, Amue and Strongine, were already to be married when I came here, I barely remember what it was like having them home.”

Those had been dark times, when both her younger sisters had married before her, the first born. It had been a disgrace to her mother’s eyes. At first, she and Mr Armstrong had tried to keep Olivier away from the public eye, in the measure that they could. After, they had done everything in their power to find her a suitable male partner that wouldn’t mind her manners nor her age. Her father, at least, had done so with good grace and naiveté, even when all of their plans failed.

Nobody had wanted a woman like Olivier, who knew what she wanted and what she didn’t. No one had been able to tolerate her difference, and no one had really known what lay in the heart of it.

“And,” Olivier said, “you must have heard about Major Alex Armstrong from Central Command.” That was all she meant to say about Alex, even if Zinnia said she had no idea who he was. “As for the youngest, Catherine, I’ve never met her.”

The face Zinnia made broke Olivier’s heart.

“You’ve… never met your sister?” she muttered.

“I was sent a picture years ago on occasion of the birth.”

Zinnia was silent at that. She kept imagining a baby with Olivier’s eye color and her same hair, surrounded by all of her siblings except for the eldest, who was already far away fighting wars. She kept imagining what things would have been like in her own home if she’d had a sister. Would Zinnia really have felt the same way about leaving if there had been someone with her she felt she shouldn’t leave behind?

True, she had had her father, too. But a sister wouldn’t have been able to handle herself the same way her father had.

They were both silent for a long time after, so long they didn’t know anymore how much time had passed. From time to time, the clouds moved past their fields of vision and sparks of starlight shone in the dark sky.

Then, Zinnia spoke again. She shivered a little. Her heart was cold. The silence had only resulted in stirring up some old memories. it had been a long while since she’d been paying attention to the fields and mountains that stretched towards the horizon.

“I ran away from home,” she spoke very softly, as if she was scared of being overheard. “My… thing with that girl I told you about, Dew, didn’t really work out, and I thought I was over it but she, uh, got married eventually and I, well… I’d already been meaning to leave for a long time. My family has a butchery I was supposed to inherit and I had an ex-boyfriend who clearly wanted to have another stab at it and I just—I kept feeling I was living the wrong life. Central never really suited me. I guess—” She remembered fondly one thing Candie had said to her once, about liking extremes. “I guess lukewarm doesn’t do it for me.”

Olivier nodded, hurdling a little closer. It hadn’t left her indifferent to see the girl shiver from either the wind or the memories. Their arms touched.

“The choice is always between hot or cold; no one ever includes the option of lukewarm.”

“Yeah.”

“You were back, though, weren’t you?”

Zinnia nodded as well; she had a lump in her throat.

“I’ve been back a few times. To check on them, to… try and see if I’d ever outgrow the feeling. But it’s still there. And they keep wanting me back, to take care of the business and take care of them. And… that’s just not my life.” She laughed. “I don’t know what my life _is,_ but I’ve an idea of what it’s not.”

Olivier’s smile was sly now. “I’ve landed myself a wanderer.”

“The opposite of you,” Zinnia remarked, looking her in the eye.

“Opposites attract, don’t they?”

“More than attracted,” Zinnia said, “I would say I’m intrigued.” Then she blushed again at how fast her heart was beating at the thoughts that followed after attraction had been established as a fact. “Okay, and maybe also attracted. But not because you’re my opposite. You just—are full of contradictions.”

“Human nature.”

“And they’re contradictions I want to understand. You save lives and you take lives, but your greatest efforts lie in hiding that you care about them all.”

And Olivier was left speechless at that. Because it was the closest thing to cracking the code.

“Why?” Zinnia kept saying, now looking at the mountains and the sky in the night, but still never at the border. It was as if she’d forgotten she was here on patrol, not on a date. Although, she had to admit this was starting to become a date spot lately. “You’ve built a home out of this place. These people… they’re your family and you’re theirs. They must know already that you care.”

“I’m not supposed to,” Olivier finally said. “I’m supposed to keep them safe, not mourn them if I fail. I’m supposed to stand here and not notice who is missing, because what matters is the wall, not who watches it.”

She said it to the wind, but Zinnia heard her. Her heart broke a second time. For the woman saying those words and the ghosts beneath them.

“But, yes, I care.” Olivier sighed. “Human nature, again. Infallible even when it shouldn’t be.”

Zinnia thought about it and looked at her. In this light, in the snow and the dark, Olivier looked even small, hard a feat as that was. She looked like just any normal woman in the world, with normal burdens on her shoulders. And the fact that this differed so enormously from reality made Zinnia’s blood boil.

“So you _want_ to be cold, then? Is being cold what you’re going for?” Then, she asked what she was biting her lip to: “Is … _this_ also about you being cold?”

She didn’t have to elaborate on the ‘this’ anymore, they both understood.

“I won’t deny that putting distance between my emotions and my work is a must for me. But,” Olivier said, emphasizing the last word, “you being here is nothing but a sign of me thawing. Anyone else would have ended up in North City under North Command’s jurisdiction. Anyone else with as many requests as you had would have mined my patience as well. And that’s the reason I knew: you weren’t _any_ body else. And I couldn’t keep pretending you were.” Olivier locked eyes with Zinnia, their blue as freezing-cold as the temperature. “You being _here_ is nothing but a sign of me thawing.”

Zinnia gulped.

“Me being here is nothing but a sign of my absolute inability to process a crush.” She winked. “Or do you think I just put this much effort into anything?”

“No, I figured you didn’t. But your cooking skills would have greatly improved if you had.”

Zinnia punched her softly in the right arm. Olivier felt the wind flow between them for that second until Zinnia pressed herself against her again.

After that, she wrapped an arm around Zinnia’s shoulders. And for a moment neither of them moved.

“Cold?” Olivier asked.

“It’s winter, cold is a given.”

“I’ll go get you something warm to drink, then.” And at that she stood up, dusted the bits of ice off her clothes, and marched down to the coffee machine. “Don’t freeze on me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, General.”

Olivier walked away, pretending she didn’t get the strangest, softest feeling when Zinnia addressed her directly.

It was late and, despite the nap she had taken earlier to be more alert now that she currently was, her eyes were droopy. And she did not want to fall asleep tonight. Not for one minute of it. This was the reason she’d been sleepless for the past many months, and it was happening right underneath her nose, right between her arms.

Getting something to drink had been a splendid idea. She might even last for the full night without having to close her eyes if she drank a few cups of coffee.

She returned with two mugs and sat back on the cold stone, this time not bothering to pretend and directly putting an arm around Zinnia, however gently.

“Thanks,” Zinnia said, wrapping her fingers around the mug.

“Write me something,” Olivier asked all of a sudden.

“Now?”

“Drachma won’t attack.” It seemed to Zinnia as if Olivier was saying, ‘I’m here, and if they do, they will see me and perish before I let them get close to you’.

“Still, I’m supposed to be working and this has slowly given way to something like… a date. A peculiar one but still a date. What would be the usual punishment for, say, Austin doing such a thing?”

Olivier snorted at the question. “Austin gets dishes. He despises doing them.”

“Okay,” Zinnia said, understanding how unclear her meaning had been. She moved a little closer to her left, now definitely _pressing_ herself against Olivier’s body. “What would _I_ get, if I wasn’t me?”

“Something that annoyed you,” Olivier answered impassively, as she felt her heartbeat speed up when Zinnia started gaining terrain on her. “Something tortuous and long that taught you a valuable lesson.”

The words came out of her but her breath had become a separate entity within her. She had to focus and try to control it, but it was increasingly hard.

“What lesson?” Zinnia asked, very, very softly, very close to Olivier’s right ear.

“That you should make a date out of work if you’re with me,” Olivier murmured right back, and then couldn’t help it, her hand moved on its own accord from Zinnia’s shoulder to her face, to feel that jawline under her gloved thumb. She had an unhealthy amount of adoration for that jawline.

“Wrong lesson,” Zinnia muttered.

“I’m not so sure right now…”

And then Olivier kissed her. And, of course, it _was_ the right lesson, the right punishment. Tortuously long…

“Write me something,” Olivier muttered again. “Without filters. Because I know you have them.”

And Zinnia’s lips felt dry, her tongue unable to wet them.

“I didn’t need them at first,” she admitted. They were still pressed together, their faces almost touching, dancing in the infinitely small distance separating each other. “But… things escalated. I’m not good at writing about the truth.”

But Olivier shook her head. “You are. You don’t know but you are.”

“What I see and what I may write from that perception… is not the truth. It’s just my truth.”

“Well, then it’s that truth that I want, if you want to give it.”

Then Zinnia started talking, and it was so different from reading her words. This wasn’t careful, it wasn’t premeditated, it was word vomit in a gentler form—honesty without brakes.

Zinnia was aware that this wasn’t editable, this wasn’t ink on paper or thoughts in her mind, volatile and forgettable. This was actual speech, which was leaving her mouth and reaching someone’s ears, sinking into her brain.

_“I’m here but you and I both know I shouldn’t be. Who am I to meddle? To make use of a world that’s not mine by right or choice. You’ve walked these corridors for years, you’ve gotten blood on your hands, you’ve lost people on the way. You know things I can only imagine, and I can only imagine them poorly, because in my mind they are but a meek reflection of what is and was your reality. I pale in your presence, not just because you are who you are and have done terrible things, but because I want in into that life of evil-doing and mellow justice and that life is not the place where I am to belong. Yet it’s where you do, and that’s why I grow curious. Because it’s you I want to unravel.”_

Zinnia looked away after that. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she knew that heart wanted to take it all back. Truth—her truth. A dangerous thing to offer without a second thought.

“I like that last part,” Olivier said impassively.

Zinnia laughed.

“Came up with it on the spot. Needs work.”

“Don’t write that one down. I’d rather remember it. It makes it special, in a way, that I can’t keep it hidden in a drawer,” Olivier said, sighing as she looked at the clearing horizon. An imperceptible ray of sunlight had begun to break through, upwards into a sky than in a few minutes would be both orange and blue. “I keep them all.”

Zinnia looked at her, unable to believe what she was hearing. Had Olivier just said she _kept_ them?

“Like receipts?” she said with a smirk.

“Like…” Olivier frowned. She couldn’t find the right word for what those writings meant to her. “Something more than memories.”

“Badges of honor?” Zinnia said.

Olivier chuckled. “No.”

“I honestly had no idea. I thought you just… threw them away.”

“Then why keep writing them?”

“Do you really need me to tell you? After so long?” Zinnia said. Every beat of her heart was a ‘she keeps them’, hidden and silent and doubly real. “ _Can_ you tell me why you kept them?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that.

Finally, what had seemed to be just a few dashes of light rose from behind the mountains in a ball of icy fire, proud and still dormant. The mountains seemed to have changed color under that new light.

“You saw me,” Olivier just said. “You didn’t just see what I’d put up for the world to.”

“Well, in my defense I’ll say you’re terrible at hiding,” Zinnia said, again too close. “Too tall.”

Olivier gave one last longing look at the sunrise and fixed her eyes on Zinnia’s. Brown like the heart of a spring summit, brown and perhaps with the slightest tint of green. Spring, without a doubt.

Spring and winter.

Then, she rose, like the sun, and Zinnia looked at her as she did.

“Come on up,” Olivier said, offering her a hand to help her up. “Your shift is over.”

And Zinnia wrapped her fingers around Olivier’s hand and stood as well. If the soldiers finishing their shifts alongside the top of the fort had looked at them right that second, they would have seen the silhouettes of two woman against the newborn sunlight of winter, holding hands.

They descended together in silence. They had worn their voices thin by talking for so long in the cold of the night, in their hearts they coveted the warmth of their room and a few hours of sleep before the hectic flow of activity at Briggs woke them up.

Olivier sat Zinnia down on the bed, even if it wasn’t her turn to use it.

“Don’t argue,” Olivier just said.

And Zinnia didn’t. She’d slept about four hours that night and all that talking about emotions had made her even softer than usual. She doubted she could be biting now even if she wanted to, especially now that her attention wasn’t even slightly focused on the invisible border.

But when Olivier began to take off Zinnia’s boots, as if she did so every night, Zinnia complained.

“Petition to argue now,” she mumbled, then rubbed at her eyes, repressing a yawn.

“You can’t,” Olivier said, finally getting a boot out and placing it underneath the bed. Then she set to work on the laces of the other.

When she was done, she turned around to get Zinnia’s PJs out of the drawer, but Zinnia stopped her with a quiet:

“Come here.”

Olivier did, leaving the drawer open, and Zinnia got up, barefoot against the cold wood, and started to unbutton Olivier’s uniform.

“Don’t even argue,” she said, laughing a little, mostly from exhaustion.

“Do I look like I’m about to?” Olivier said, not resisting in the slightest.

She promptly leaned on Zinnia’s shoulder to untie her boots and kick them off, then she helped Zinnia into one of her night dresses like this was routine and not the sweetest of novelties.

“Now, off to bed, you,” Olivier muttered. “There’s work to do in the morning.”

Zinnia obeyed quietly, this time not bothering to pretend she wasn’t yawning, and clung to the hem of covers like little kids did, the biggest smile on her face.

“Technically, it’s morning now.”

Olivier shook her head with a smile and leaned in to kiss the crown of Zinnia’s head before getting to the mattress opposite the bed, but Zinnia gently wrapped a hand around her wrist and looked her in the eye.

“Get in with me,” she asked.

And Olivier was too tired indeed to argue that it made no sense, having two beds and not using them, because indeed it made sense. It made beautiful sense. And if she had an invitation, she might as well. She’d been dreaming of it since the very first night, not that long ago—but long enough ago to her.

She got into the bed as well, and Zinnia didn’t take longer than three seconds before she huddled closer and spooned her from behind, not daring yet to put an arm over her.

Olivier didn’t have the heart to tell her it was going to be a rocky, insomnia-induced morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Olivier's heart might be the one melting, but I'm already a pool of feels.


	33. A scar on iron

Olivier fell into bliss like a bird shot from the sky. Her chest didn’t rise, it heaved; her lips curved into grins, not smiles; she didn’t feel like her emotions were incapacitating her, she felt like they were helping her grow the way she had never allowed herself to. And all she had to do now was let herself fall and fall. Zinnia would be waiting for her down at the bottom to catch her.

Falling was easy, then. She felt safe as she did, even knowing this wouldn’t last forever.

Life had become a feast of the work Olivier had given up on a normal life for and the girl who was showing her she hadn’t really missed out on much that she couldn’t still have. And she could have so much of it now, just by living. A second adolescence, triggered by something akin to love and something similar to happiness but never quite. She didn’t find the words, and she didn’t ask Zinnia to fetch them for her, because she was sure Zinnia would find them—stubborn as she was—and she liked not knowing them yet.

Their meaning seeped anyway into their room, early in the mornings as they awoke in the same bed, the old mattress forgotten against the other wall.

Sometime ago, Olivier had come up from the office earlier than usual and had found Zinnia sitting on her desk with the most dramatic thinking face, as if calculating where else to put it.

“Hoping to cut a hole in the wall?” Olivier had said as she kissed Zinnia’s forehead to say hi. Most times she didn’t initiate any sort of contact until they were both in bed, but it felt nice to indulge sometimes.

“Not really, I just wanted to figure out if a bigger bed would fit in here.”

Olivier had shucked her clothes off and put on something more comfortable, then she’d sat at the chair, and routinely Zinnia had gotten off the table to sit on her lap. She had still looked as if her eyes might have started punching a hole through the wall into the next cubicle down the corridor.

“You want a bigger bed, then?”

“Why not? We’re… sleeping in the same bed now. What do we need an extra mattress for? Also, wherever you nicked it from might probably benefit from getting it back.”

“It was in disuse.”

“And who is sleeping on the cold floors because of that excuse?”

“No one. I’m not like that.”

Zinnia had laughed. “Could we get the bed, then?”

“I guess so, I’ll just have to find money for it. And find a proper excuse. Unless you want everyone to know, that is.”  
Zinnia had shrugged and Olivier had started to panic. Her nonchalance had only existed in appearances.

“I don’t think they’re too far from finding out. It’s already been long enough.”

“No one knows,” Olivier had assured her, innocently. She had to look up at her when they were sitting like this. “But if you want a bed, I’ll get a bed. This one is old already.”

It wasn’t. But she’d be damned if she passed on a chance to do this properly. She’d wanted more space to cuddle at night without someone’s limbs dangling dangerously off the edge. Not that she would ever admit to that.

“Then I’ll get the mattress back,” Zinnia had said.

Zinnia had tried to get up but Olivier’s hand had wrapped around her wrist.

“It has to be now?”

“Depends,” Zinnia had said with a smirk. “What do you offer me in return?”

So Olivier had made arrangements for a new bed, which would take a while to arrive in the current weather conditions, and meanwhile the extra mattress was just laying around. A part of her, she guessed, was still waiting for Zinnia to tire of this and want her nighttime rest back.

Olivier, for one, was sleeping better than ever. It might have something to do with having company, as if her self-conscious was unable to fully believe a nightmare when there was a body next to hers who wouldn’t hesitate in punching the nightmares out of existence, even in the case that they had been real.

In the mornings, it showed. She felt as if the war was easier to win now that she had backup, and she woke up feeling a bit more rested and ready to face the new day, boring and dull as every new day dawned to be. But people seemed content with the lack of activity, and even she had to admit that a war breaking right now wouldn’t even please her. There would be too much to lose and mourn. Luckily for her and everyone else on the fort, the Mountain Men returned every time with nothing alerting to report, claiming that there had been no sightings of Drachman soldiers lurking around the border and that the horizon was still.

And in spite of Briggs’ forces having already deployed the tanks and canons in case of an invasion, Olivier’s new interest was the route Buccaneer had proposed. Because, indeed, there were too many blind spots in the current expedition map that could be the reason behind Drachma’s radio silence. She was using whatever instance of free time she had to explore every possibility and make a few modifications to the proposed route as well. Nothing could be left to chance, not with this.

Miles knocked on her door, making her stop tracing a line midway.

“Morning, General,” he said—his usual greeting, one that she did not return. He was coming in a bit later than usual, but she didn’t comment on that either. She felt there was no need to, he was an adult, he should know why he wasn’t on time.

Her posture—it didn’t escape him—was prominently more relaxed and casual than the one he’d grown used to in the past many years. He mentioned nothing to her and just approached his allotted seat.

“Working on anything new?” he asked as he took off his coat. Her office was warm still. Immediately, he leaned towards her desk to have a look at that which captivated her full attention. He’d only ever seen those maps down at Buccaneer’s department.

“Just some modifications for the route Buccaneer proposed. An extension to our current ones, if you will.”

“Sounds like a mouthful.”

“It is.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ve numbers to add up.” He meant to politely retreat into his chair but something caught his eyes. Aside from the map, there were several pieces of paper written in a handwriting he had learned to recognize with time: Zinnia’s. “Oh, you’ve… eh… new papers on your desk.”

“I thought I’d told you to mind your business about that,” Olivier said without looking up from her papers. ”You and the captain, both.”

Miles pretended he hadn’t gotten reprimanded. He’d already put up with too much to care. She obviously wasn’t even angry at him, she was just busy with her own tasks, and happy as everyone had noticed she was now, there was no danger for them of having to spend two years in the cells by the boilers. Not that Miles should excuse his curiosity in that prevalent and apparent safety.

“Won’t you read them?” he asked.

“Want to come over and read them with me, Miles?” she said, exceedingly sweet.

“Really?”

Then her voice turned into stone, in her usual brisk remark: “No, Miles. Don’t be daft.”

“Pity, it looks promising.”

She did smile a little at that. “It always is.”

The idea of it, behind it all, was nothing but a promise. A promise and a gift. If someone had fallen from the sky months ago and told Olivier that one day, not much later, she would find what she was lucky enough to be living now, she would have sneered at them.

She didn’t get tastes of freedom or happiness, she just did her duty and served her country and tried to have no regrets when she went to bed at four in the morning. Her life hadn’t been her own, it shouldn’t be. But now it was. And she wanted to live it.

_Meeting you was like opening the door to a brand new planet._

_And exploring you felt a bit like settling down on a hill by a lake under the sun. Extraordinary and like coming back home after a long day._

_How can you do both? How can I let you?_

_I wonder, too, if I was a planet or just a piece of rock floating around you._

When Olivier finished this and went downstairs and saw Zinnia again, she would actually let go of all uneasiness and just say what she’d thought upon reading those words this morning: _If I’m a planet, you’re the star that keeps me warm._

She had never in her life said anything so corny. She could always _un_ sweeten it with a bit of her usual grumpy side, and Zinnia would be as happy as a child during their first snow.

Olivier smiled to herself now.

Anything made that girl happy, her part to play in it was delightful to take on.

“Hey, are you about done with that?” Miles asked, pointing at the document she’d been drafting and almost finishing up on.

“Yes, what do you need with it?”

“Oh, it’s not for me. I saw Buccaneer downstairs. He complained about needing the new budgets for something.”

She passed Miles the document, imagining that to that sentence Buccaneer had added a few _real_ complains about how long it took her to have them all done and signed.

“Get it down to him, then,” she said. And she remembered to add: “Please.”

Miles let out a tiny smirk, complacent, but he did as he was told.

Everything was slowly going back to normal, and at least he, like the rest of them, was hiding his absurd fixation on her personal life. There wasn’t anything in that life that would interest them, but Olivier had no doubt that they’d find it funny—her sudden and brief softness and the words that had left her mouth and how she became completely unable to think straight. Not to mention the look on her face when a conversation turned her entire world around, and it didn’t have to be a particularly meaningful one. They would all enjoy themselves immensely if they could see her try and act tough when deep down she couldn’t even _think._

Once she was left alone, it was inevitable that she finally leaned back on her chair and sighed. It’d been a long couple of hours of pretty much the same old routine that tired her eyes and made her back ache, so she stretched a little, still a bit numb after a long night of many sharing a bed that was too small for two.

And she remembered the conversation, too.

She had no idea how she could scurry an entire bed into this fort without it raising suspicion. She didn’t think she could deal properly with hundreds of men eyeing her curiously as she dragged the devilish mattress up the stairs into her room.

That would clear things up. For _good._

Eventually, though, they’d find out anyway. But… did it have to be in such a crass manner? Couldn’t she just round them up and tell them?

 _No, I’m not their mum,_ she told herself. She was behaving like one, anyway. A mother who is afraid to tell her kids that she’s seeing someone after having left her spouse.

Slowly, very very slowly—and watching the door so Miles couldn’t barge in, oblivious, and catch her red-handed—Olivier picked up the phone and rang North City.

If the men had to find out their boss was sharing a room—and all that may entail—with the civilian who couldn’t cook and liked to pick small fights through the delivery of a huge (because, honestly, Olivier wasn’t going to buy any normal bed) mattress, then so be it. 

* * *

 

_I will love you gently, because I know that appearances hide the spark of fragility in you._

_I will love you kindly, because the world out there is not kind and it has weathered too many a storm upon you, even if you never thought to call them storms._

_I will love you slowly, because we live in a world that flies past our reaches too fast, and we live and die in a heartbeat. Our houses are passed on to new generations, our fields plowed by new owners of the land, our borders kept safe by new waves of soldiers, and our stories may only remain in the words we wrote to one another. I will love you slowly, because if it all is gone before we even learn to treasure it, I won’t let you go before it’s time._

_And I will love you ardently, because I waited too long to even be able to write those words._  

* * *

 

When Olivier finally left the office around lunch time, her good humor had slowly but surely returned. She was hearing Miles hum a silly old pirate song under his breath that Buccaneer had probably gotten into his head, and she didn’t flinch or think of asking him to stop. She welcomed the lively tune of it, it matched with her heart. Spring had come to the Ice Queen’s heart, and what could she possibly do about a thawing heart?

Miles had been right about Zinnia’s last piece of art, it had been promising. Very much so. Enlightening, as well. And … perhaps even moving, to some extent.

And gay, so terribly gay Olivier wanted to press that piece of paper against her chest and never let go. Something so blatantly _not_ straight, something that bold and challenging wouldn’t have been allowed to exist in her world, for the sole fact that she would have been too embarrassed to let it. Now she knew other people had their eyes on it, waiting to read what came next just like she did, and Olivier did not give a solitary single fuck.

 _Let them,_ a part of her thought. _This is who I am through the eyes of a stranger turned lover. If they wanted gossip, let them feast until they can’t anymore._

The other part wasn’t as happy, but she decided to let that part overlook things a little. Some bits of her were thriving now because of that, the price seemed just to her.

She had an entire drawer filled with written portraits that she had received for free, through wind and tide and despite everything (convention, situational conflicts, her own blurry relationship with the author), and now she even had the promise of more. _Promising,_ Miles had said. And he had been right to say it.

Today, like every day, coming down to have lunch got her heart beating more excitedly just by thinking of whether or not they’d run into each other again (Zinnia, not Miles; Miles was upstairs in her office finishing up on something). They didn’t always, although Olivier would be lying if she wasn’t adjusting her schedule so very slightly so that it would happen more often.

She always liked the conversations they had, even if they ended up being about possums or plants in Central or even the weather forecast. There was always much to discuss about the northern snowflake if one was in the right company.

Olivier’s smile suddenly materialized itself, fully grown, onto her face when she spotted Zinnia in the queue to get her rations for the day. She walked to her, grabbed her own tray, and the two of them went to sit together with a few others. No one seemed to think anything of it, it was normal for most at this point. Besides, Olivier had eyes for nothing else that wasn’t how ridiculously cute this girl could be without even trying. 

* * *

 

How the hell she’d already written something, Zinnia had no clue about. She had no time to, literally. She was… highly solicited all day long and all night long, and if she wrote, she wrote hurriedly over dubiously smooth surfaces and in between tasks.

After lunch, today, she’d scribbled a quick something on a napkin, but she hadn’t had time to finish it because having lunch took priority and then Olivier had strung along and Zinnia had left the sentence unfinished until a good hour later, when she had to patrol for a while but the area she’d been assigned to was quiet as a tomb.

She’d smoothed out the napkin on her thigh and finished it, and as soon as she’d been satisfied with it, she’d waited for her shift to be over to take it up to Olivier’s office. Because caring about someone other than the usual clique finding it now seemed like something insignificant. What could they derive from it? The truth?

Before, she might have been offended that someone might have pointed out she liked the stuck-up general that ruled with an iron fist. Now? Whatever they said would probably be true, anyway. If she ever worried about it, she worried about people finding out and taking it all _the wrong way._ But she tried not to think about that. The satisfaction she got when she knocked on the door, walked in the office—Miles and Buccaneer present, as always—and saw Olivier’s ‘I have mail’ face compared to nothing else and would outshine the entire world.

“Hi,” Zinnia just said as she placed the carefully—and slightly wrinkled up—napkin under Olivier’s sign with her name and rank.

Then she walked right out with a huge smile on her face, knowing full well Buccaneer’s jaw had dropped to the very floor she walked on at the sight of what had just happened. Zinnia had just given him food for thought that would last a lifetime, and it showed, even if she wasn’t looking at him.

“New stuff, boss,” Buccaneer said once Zinnia had left.

“New stuff, yes,” Olivier replied, nursing a warm cup of coffee and repressing a chuckle. This man got even more ridiculous by the minute. He looked exactly like he had ages ago, on Olivier’s first snow as more than just an officer, when she had made the biggest snowball and hadn’t hesitated to throw it at his back. Up until then, he’d been the champion snowballer, and she had stolen his title right under his nose. If Olivier could have chosen any descriptor for him in this moment, that would have been it. His surprise and embarrassment were obvious.

But, of course, he had a dangerous glint of pride in his eyes as well, especially when he _conspicuously_ leaned in towards the napkin and squinted, trying to read it in his humongous height.

“This one’s the best one yet,” he said. “Aren’t you going to…?”

“They’re for me,” Olivier said. “I read them before you two do, even if you think you outrun me most of the time.”

“Hey, I never said I think we outrun you.”

“It’s come up in conversation more often than not,” Miles added to incriminate him.

Olivier now did stare at Buccaneer, impassively.

“Anything else?”

“No, that … that was all.”

“Good,” she said, getting back to the reading she was patiently doing.

“Enjoy your coffee,” he grumbled before he turned around to leave.

“I certainly will,” she replied. And this time it was his turn to repress a chuckle or two. He’d had his suspicions about things having _worked out_ in many a way since Zinnia had stayed, but the fact that now she delivered her writings directly to Olivier’s hand (or almost) without batting an eye or that they’d been seen together a few times, although nothing had been too off the charts, or that Olivier herself seemed to have ditched her usual demeanor made Buccaneer suspect that, indeed, his plans to do more than just reconcile two souls at war had worked out perfectly. 

* * *

 

Buccaneer squealed. Actually squealed. Like one of those toys who remained more or less silent until you squished it at the right places. Miles had only heard Buccaneer be as vocal about his excitement a couple of times in his life, and he knew it couldn’t be stopped now.

Thankfully, no one else was in the office at the moment to judge.

“This is like Christmas,” Buccaneer said, sniffling the tears away. He’d only just read it to himself a couple of times, but the last paragraph Zinnia had left behind had moved him to bits, like he hadn’t spent weeks reading Olivier’s treasured collection behind everyone’s backs. “It’s so _different_ from the rest of the stuff.”

“Yeah,” Miles said, arms crossed. “It’s private.”

“ _You_ ’ve read it.”

“And I keep my opinions to myself.”

“Miles…”

“What?”

The second Miles looked up at him, he regretted it. Buccaneer had the eyes of a fifteen-year-old who’s just been spoken to by their greatest crush, only his crush wasn’t one per se, just someone else’s story that he got to follow intensively through words.

Someone did definitely have to get Buccaneer a heavy pile of magazines to distract him from other people’s feelings or his own would end up flooding the fort. How could he be so dramatic and not fall apart from the contradiction? Miles thought.

“They’re in love,” Buccaneer said gently.

“Oh, for the love of—”

“They really are, Miles. She left it on Olivier’s desk right in front of us. Did you see her face? Their faces. I saw their faces. I see something in there we were only scratching the surface of.”

Miles sighed.

“Love, huh? You know love now?”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve never cared for anybody,” Buccaneer grumbled. “We did this little thing because of her, didn’t we? Because we cared.”

“And because you were bored. And we thought she’d be… yeah, happy, maybe. She looks happy now.”

“They both do.”

“They look like they’re in love,” Miles finally agreed with him. There wasn’t any other expression for it. Regardless of whether or not the happy couple was displaying that happiness when together, to the pair of them it had become obvious that it transcended normal levels of joy. This was elation.

Buccaneer licked his lips and read out loud: _“What’s going to happen? How is it going to? Will the snow ever stop falling? Do I want it to?”_

“Just keep going,” Miles muttered angrily when Buccaneer paused to say something boisterous.

The captain continued, if only so he wouldn’t be aggravating Miles any more.

 _“What hides under it but more ice and snow? It may be cold at touch, but dig into its heart and it’s a sun. And I’m a girl of extremes, I don’t dislike either.”_ Buccaneer finished, voice a little dented at the edges after reading those words. Those words which elicited the highest emotional response yet in his heart. “I mean… There’s stuff and then there’s… _stuff._ ” He cleared his throat. “Just hold on, listen to what follows.”

And he kept reading. 

* * *

 

No instructions were needed now. They moved around each other, dodging attacks that should have hit their target, because they lived in each other’s heads and could predict their movements in battle. If only this had been a skill that remained after they left the gymnasium.

Olivier held back, because otherwise this would turn out to be another letting-off-steam session like with Mauser, and the purpose of this (aside from the obvious and not very professional one) was to train Zinnia so she could handle herself if it ever came to that. Olivier’s soldiers had already come here knowing how to use a few different weapons, all Zinnia had known was how to tear her opponent’s face if said opponent wasn’t too big, and Olivier was not about to let her face the definitely bigger threat of Drachma bare-handed. She wasn’t shielding her, either. If Olivier fell, Zinnia would be on her own. And that was more terrifying and frustrating than having to dial back a few moves so these sessions were still effective.

“Getting better, huh?” Olivier tainted her when both their swords clashed.

Zinnia raised an eyebrow, her concentration made physical in her frown and the way her arms were tensed up to keep the sword where it was. She knew she would never outlast Olivier Armstrong and the brutality her arms could bring upon earth if unleashed, but she could still fend her off for a little while, distract her and—

“Just learning how to exhaust you,” she grumbled. For longer than she remembered, she’d wanted to win, to prove to herself and to Olivier that, indeed, she could do so much more than just survive. Her brain spurting a thousand ideas a second at her, her feet moved almost on their own accord and she twirled, keeping her sword up to defend herself, and its cold metal edge got lost in Olivier’s hair, but it grazed her temple and Zinnia immediately snapped out of it.

Panting hard, sword down, Zinnia asked:

“You okay?”

Olivier pressed two fingers to her temple, beneath the ever-permanent curtain of hair, and when she looked at her fingertips she saw they were stained by tiny droplets of red.

It wouldn’t have stopped her, but Zinnia immediately dropped the weapon and dashed to get the first-aid kid from one of the cabinets at the back.

“I don’t need it,” Olivier said when she realized what Zinnia meant to do.

The flower girl’s hand hovered over a box of band aids and some antiseptic.

“Are you sure?” she said. “You’re bleeding. I cut you, I’m sorry.”

With her other hand, Zinnia tried to slowly part the hair and at least see the damage, but Olivier’s fingers were quick to wrap around her wrist and stop her.

“It’s okay, just leave it.”

But Zinnia insisted.

Their eyes locked.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

There wasn’t really a reason. Zinnia had already been close to it many, many times, and Olivier had been fine with it at the time. Zinnia making her discovery while they were getting up or going to bed or anything along those lines would have ended up turning into a different conversation. Now there was guilt involved in both sides.

Olivier hadn’t exactly kept it hidden, but for the longest time she’d worn her hair the way she did so no one would know immediately.

She grunted, cursed under her breath, and combed her hair back with her fingers, rough against the crown of her head.

It exposed the scar, old and faint and slightly embossed, a memory of past times, past mistakes, and the future she was fighting to change.

“Happy now, flower girl?” she said. She’d always called her that in her head, because she’d had no other name for her at the time and it had stuck till the end, but now it was not meant endearingly. It stung to say it now.

Zinnia, though, didn’t look twice at the scar. She did what she’d wanted to from the beginning and just absorbed the remaining blood away from the new cut, a few inches below the old scar, then made sure it wouldn’t fester. She couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that a woman who cared so little about what people at large thought of her was intently hiding a _scar_ of all things. It made no sense. She had other scars, scattered across her body, fainter even than this one and barely anything more important than a mole or a spot.

Then why hide this one? Why impair her vision wearing her hair the way she did in order to do so?

Then, when Zinnia was finally done, she put everything back in the kit and threw away the waste. Olivier still hadn’t moved when she walked back to her.

“Can’t you just tie your hair into a ponytail?” Zinnia asked, cupping the other woman’s face. Her blonde hair made Zinnia’s exposed skin tickle. It was so long, it got everywhere, and when they fought it floated like a cloud around the two of them. In the mornings, it wasn’t that rare of an occurrence to wake up covered in a sheet of hair or to be lying atop it.

“Commoners don’t do ponytails.”

“Olivier,” Zinnia only said. And Olivier couldn’t help but be startled by it, because Zinnia only ever used her name so sparingly. She wasn’t even sure this wasn’t one of the first times she used it for effect—and it was working on Olivier better than any other words. In a way, it carried the same weight as reprimands when she’d been a child and all the power her parents had had had manifested in the verbalization of her full name.

And, like back then, Olivier had plenty to say that would challenge that power.

“It’s a sign of weakness,” she stated, crossing her arms. It was a defense mechanism, but it was one of the best. She was a tank against enemy fire. “That is the one thing I cannot show.”

“Oh, yeah, they will _burn_ you at the stake.” Zinnia said. “For a scar that’s—What? A souvenir from the Drachman Wars?”

Olivier just nodded solemnly. A bit of debris from times when war had actually been fought, not tiptoed around; being in the wrong place at the wrong time; and now she had a scar for life. Tiny and insignificant, yet still a sign that even iron could get scratched. And that was the last thing she needed others to see in her, vulnerability. Even if it was ancient vulnerability.

Her other scars were in much less public spots—her calf, her thigh, the inside of her arm, her stomach—, and she didn’t give a shit about the only person who could see them _seeing_ them.

But this one was out in the open unless she hid it, and it sang old songs about victory that came at the cost of losing.

“It’s never been a problem before,” Olivier just said.

“It might be,” Zinnia said firmly. Then, her voice turned somewhat softer: “And, to be honest? It’s a lame way to go. Because your hair got in the way.”

Her eyes shone gently, too. She wasn’t pressing the issue here, but Olivier just wanted her to, because she had many more explanations at the ready. She could still have some control in how this memory formed in both their minds.

 _It’s just a scar,_ she thought. _It shouldn’t matter so much._

But, she’d found in her many years, often a thing that seemed little would always be embedded in things that were not.

That was what signified the danger she’d faced once, the danger that had made her the iron general she was, and the danger that still lurked around her domains, waiting to bring her people down and herself with it. She couldn’t let that happen, she couldn’t let them know there was a way she could be defeated.

For all anyone cared, she was an impenetrable wall, an undefeatable combatant.

Zinnia smiled all of a sudden.

“I can’t braid,” she said. “But Buccaneer looks like he does.”

Buccaneer sported a thin black braid himself, and it became hard to imagine he needed to ask someone for help in the mornings to rebraid it. He had to do that on his own. He should know how to braid, then.

Olivier glared at Zinnia. “I’m not going to ask him to teach me.”

Zinnia smirked. “ _I_ can ask him.”

“Your hair isn’t braid long.”

“I wouldn’t tell him it’s for me.” Zinnia grinned an awful, terribly awful grin.

“Well, you’re not telling him it’s for _me_.”

“Oh, yes, I am.” Zinnia giggled now. Then: “I’m not letting you lose again because of something as silly as hair.”

Olivier smirked in return, remembering why they were here in the first place. “True, you won.”

“Doesn’t count. I want my rematch.”

Then Zinnia grabbed her own sword right out of Olivier’s hands. 

* * *

 

_“It buries me, the snow. And I’ve found it’s not as cold as it may seem. In bigger quantities, it’s like a mantle of glistening white, and it warms you up slowly, reflecting the light of the sun within rather than the one shining in the sky. I don’t understand people who don’t like snow, now. It takes some getting used to, being around it, being surrounded by it, but once you’ve started to think the best of it, you never stop. I know I haven’t, and I don’t want to. Loving the snow, in a way, is like loving you. You cradle me late at night, like I am the daughter of the winter you’ve bound yourself to. And I melt for you in our shimmering spring.”_

“Okay, yeah. That last part confirms everything.”

Buccaneer made incoherent happy noises like a kid in their first snowball fight.

“You happy?”

“Terribly.” He wiped a stray tear off from under his eye. “Have you ever read anything more beautiful, Miles?”

Miles smiled and shook his head as Buccaneer left the piece of paper where he’d found it.

He still had to manage his tears. A difficult task, since they seemed to pool in his eyes and blur his vision.

“ _You cradle me late at night, like I am the daughter of the winter you’ve bound yourself to_ ,” Buccaneer repeated wetly. “I want to marry those words.”

“Tell Zinnia, I’m sure she’ll let you,” Miles chuckled.

“No need to be an asshole,” Buccaneer said, positively crying silently now, no matter how unusual that was of him. “I’m not stoic like you.”

Miles wasn’t too sure that wasn’t a hidden stab at him instead of a compliment.

“You’re not… stoic,” Miles just repeated, laughing a little harder now. “You stand as a _definition_ of stoic. Your picture is in the dictionary next to the word, Buccaneer. You’re stoic, and also really silly with stuff like this.”

“Well, then, stoically cry with me, come on. Don’t leave a man hanging.”

And Miles actually got up, reluctantly, because why was Buccaneer like that, and just hugged the mountain of a man, patted his back awkwardly, especially because he couldn’t reach very high.

“Better now?” Miles mumbled.

Buccaneer guffawed, his chest supporting Miles’s head. “Yeah, actually.”

“Now let’s pretend this never happened and that we never read this.”

“Oh, boy, that’s going to be hard, isn’t it?”

“It will be if you don’t stop crying,” Miles said, offering him a tissue.

Buccaneer took it. 

* * *

 

There was no other sound around the shower facility other than that of Zinnia trying, and failing, to get her clothes out of her bag to leave them on the bench for after her shower. After what had been a training session she hoped wouldn’t repeat itself any time soon (as it turned out she wasn’t ready for what winning actually entailed), Olivier and her had headed down for their usual shower. Normally, the room would be crowded with people queuing to have a wash right before dinner, if their days had already been wrapped up, but today it was barren. And that explained why they’d both taken the best bench to leave their things at.

Zinnia’s hands were currently busy making room in her bag for the old clothes as well when suddenly the papers she’d gathered during the day poured out of the bag like an overflowing river.

She tried to force them back in before Olivier saw, but she was quick to notice it and realize what it was.

“You carry them around?”

“No.” Now Zinnia tried to put them back into her pockets but they were wrinkled and being nervous only made it more impossible. Besides, Olivier had already seen. And Zinnia should not have been blushing this hard. Earlier today she’d just left one of those writings on her table in the presence of their matchmakers, but of course she was red in the face when Olivier had picked up on how many of those writings there actually were.

“Hiding them from me again?” Olivier teased.

“I’m not _hiding_ anything, unlike others,” Zinnia said, finally pushing them all to the back of the bag and pretending the blush was from the heat of running water that presently wasn’t running. “I’m just… keeping them for later.”

Olivier finished carelessly unbuttoning her jacket and arched an eyebrow at her.

“I don’t know where you even find the time to write.”

Zinnia, at the moment, didn’t know how the hell she had functioning enough brain cells to write. The woman was just right in front of her, her waistline eye-level with Zinnia, and probably being all serious and nonchalant while it was having the opposite effect on Zinnia herself.

After Olivier leaned in, towering over her like she always did, and almost brushed her lips, Zinnia realized how intentional it had been and reminded herself to play smarter the next time.

Zinnia licked her lips and answered as if this wasn’t happening.

“Well, I, uh,” she said, “find that Buccaneer’s department is not very busy lately...”

It never was, and Zinnia now gave no shits about Buccaneer ever catching her red-handed. He probably read her stuff out of the corner of his eye.

“You write me those things while he’s there?” Olivier asked, surprised. She’d always had this idea in the back of her head of Zinnia languidly sitting next to a window, just thinking about bare skin and war. The mental image of her writing those profound things next to a man who would kill to have those things published uneased her a little.

Zinnia giggled, finally ready to play along as she put her hands on Olivier’s shoulders. Big, broad, wonderful shoulders. Then, she shrugged and said:

“I like the risk.”

Olivier leaned in a little more to whisper in her ear.

“Do you know what he’d do if he found you writing me naughty bits in between work?”

No one refuted the ‘naughty bits’. There was a reason for Olivier to lock the writings after she got them.

Meant as a threat as it was, though, Zinnia couldn’t help but smile at the thought. “He’d read them over to Miles when neither you nor I were looking. We’re their little experiment.”

“Bullshit,” Olivier said possessively. “I’m nobody’s experiment. My mess is my own.”

“Am I your mess?”

“You’re what I get messy for.”

“They read every single thing I write to you…” Of course, no one dared pretend as well that those things got written for any other reason than for Olivier to find and lose her dignity over.

It was the only thing she could do upon reading analyses of her own life through the lens of someone who she now could say she loved.

Gently, Zinnia stood up, bodies brushing against each other because Olivier would have rather to lose a war than move away, and took Olivier’s jacket off.

Then her black undershirt.

And then Zinnia herself undid a couple of buttons on her own jacket without looking away from those big blue eyes that had been witness to carnage and beauty alike.

She wanted in into those eyes, she wanted to see the world through them. She wanted to feel life from behind them.

That was why she wrote, because the feelings lived within her, but her aspirations reached out a little further. And today she was lucky enough to be able to maneuver the winner of every fight she entered into a tiny corner by the empty shower.

“If I ever write about… moments like this,” Zinnia said, definitely taking control now, getting up to push Olivier against a wall, who immediately flipped her around without waiting for her to complain. Zinnia finished her sentence pinned against the tile. “They will read them. And this is out before we know it.”

Olivier pretended not to be looking around, trying to hear for the door opening and all those voices coming in, drowning the room in noise and Olivier’s own fear. She pretended to not be terrified of that happening at all.

_If someone comes now, it is out before I can scream them into secrecy._

“I will be very much not gentle when I write about it…” Zinnia continued in a mutter. She was definitely letting go of many things right now, jacket on the floor, boots off.

“You’re not being gentle now, either,” Olivier noted.

“Trying to see if I’m a match for you…”

And Zinnia pushed her a little more. Public place, risk, writing. She might be the one against a wall, but the vulnerable one here wasn’t Zinnia. She wouldn’t go through the best of times if the whole fort found out _like this,_ but she’d take it more lightly than Olivier would.

Olivier’s emotional response might change the world.

“Bullshit,” Olivier repeated again. “You’re trying to win.” And she definitely brushed Zinnia’s lips when she said that. “You like winning more than me.”

“That’s because you win a lot more.”

They kissed, and Zinnia backed down a couple of steps, hanging onto the bare waist of her partner as she accidentally activated the shower. Water just started falling over them, and neither moved. Hadn’t they come here for a shower?

“I placed an order for a king’s size bed,” Olivier admitted, chest bared now under Zinnia’s hands, the lower half of her uniform wetter than wet. How they were going to get out of this predicament, neither knew. Whatever happened, they just had stopped caring when their hearts had leapt out of their chests into each other’s hand. The smell of risk and danger was in the air and for one second they liked it, for it smelled like wading in a spring pool as well. It was the perfect moment to like it. In any other place, they would have stopped. But today they couldn’t. And they didn’t dare.

“That’s… bigger than kissing in a public shower.” It came out like a tiny breath of breathless and surprise, yet it carried a wave of excitement about it. No one would be able to lie about why Olivier needed a bigger bed.

“It is. It’ll take a while to arrive but…” She paused to breathe for a moment, lips intermingled with Zinnia’s. “…it’s worth it. We have till then to figure something out.”

“Most of them know already,” Zinnia said, stopping for a moment to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly. “And they don’t care. No one is going to jail for this, especially not you. You’re the boss.”

And then her hands went back to Olivier’s waist. Higher than the waist, higher than just the stomach. Olivier’s breath hitched, but she pretended it hadn’t by trying to follow the conversation.

What had that last part been? _Oh yes, boss…_

“I’m the boss…” she muttered.

“Exactly. And if they have lives, so should you.”

“ _You’re_ my life,” Olivier asserted, because there was no doubt to be had. Her survival was the mountain and the snow and the sword she carried with her, her life was… the thawing of the ice, the first blooms of spring, and the little seed of emotion that Zinnia was watering without even knowing it.

“Don’t be so melodramatic. How long have I been ‘your life’? A couple of weeks? Aren’t you like forty?”

Zinnia laughed as Olivier started thinking. She seemed distant now, lost in her own mind, looking for understanding. She hadn’t been throwing it out of proportion, at least she didn’t feel like she might have. She gave things the importance they had, because at times it was hard for her to even realize that her life was important, and not only because her country required her to be.

Life hid in the small things that the bigger things could strip away from you any moment. And Olivier rather enjoyed that feeling of rushing through, then remembering to smell the flowers, look up at the blue sky and seeing more than just colors and clouds.

“Shower with me, flower girl,” she said.

Zinnia raised her eyebrow. “And if someone comes in?”

“Well, then the ordering a brand new bed will seem insignificant in comparison.”

Zinnia giggled. “Okay, then. Go big or go home.”

And so they got rid of the remaining clothes, that judging by their state of absolute wetness might as well have stayed on, and just washed the training session off their bodies.

When they were done, they sat in the bench, not really bothering to get completely dressed and not really thinking of what a jolly image that would be for whoever came in right that second (they cared less and less the longer they stayed in the showers).

They just made that bench theirs, wasting time and enjoying time. Dinner could wait.

And Zinnia softly parted Olivier’s curtain of hair so she could see the old scar again. As soon as her hair had dried a little, Olivier, ever slapdash, had styled it as she had for years, more out of habit than anything else. But it didn’t go unnoticed to Zinnia.

“You don’t need to hide it,” Zinnia said, “you’re human. That’s what we do, we get hurt. You’re not made of iron.”

“I’m not hiding.”

But Zinnia’s eyes told her the truth, that she was. That, in a way, hiding was very much a survival tactic around here. They all had secrets, big or small, and they all played their cards very close to the chest. If someone knew what your deepest secret was, didn’t that sort of gave them control over you?

If people found out that the most notorious general on Amestris soil was nothing but another woman, tired of fighting and hungry for war, who had lost dreams and people alike, things would inevitably change for her.

“I rather like it,” Zinnia said. “It’s like the dark side of the moon, I’ve never seen it before. And…” She smiled. “It makes your face look so round…”

Then Olivier just lay her head on Zinnia’s lap.

“Braid it for me,” she said. “I want you to see my round face.”

“I don’t know how to braid.” Zinnia reminded her.

But she tried anyway, then gently undid the mess with deft fingers and let Olivier thrive in her own shields for a little longer. No one needed to know, but these soldiers they shared a life with wouldn’t sneer at her for having been weak once.

They might not even notice it.

The thing about scars is that everyone is extremely self-conscious about one’s own, and yet we hardly seem to notice everyone else’s unless explicitly shown.

Tonight, already in the kitchens, they sat surrounded by people with secrets, just like theirs. People who liked people and stories they were afraid to tell and days they hoped would never come.

Zinnia helped Olivier with the trays and they sat down, as always, in the first table they saw with two vacant seats. They did that, now, they went together, because they might as well. The day separated them, the night joined them.

And it just felt normal, and cozy, being in public—careful not to overindulge in the feeling and accidentally incite a thousand thousand new rumors—and having their chests hold in a breath or two at the thought of the men around them noticing something and knowing something.

Even so, the chatter around them, with the soldiers saying hello to one another and sharing the stories of the day like the two of them did, whispered a welcome. The kind of welcome that you feel when coming home.

And Olivier and Zinnia were too caught up in the home between their unlaced fingers to notice that now.


	34. The mattress

Mauser got up fairly early in the mornings so he could be one of the first to have some quiet along with his coffee. Whoever had just finished on their shift drank in tomb-like silence, ready for bed, and following the fort’s schedule almost nobody deemed it necessary to rise a few hours sooner than normal just to grab a fully unoccupied table.

Mauser did it, because he enjoyed the contrast between Briggs’ usual chaotic energy and how enticingly still everything was when most of its inhabitants were still snoring their dreams away in the dorms, and because if he slept on a little longer he’d find himself queuing for breakfast and running late. He preferred to get up before the sun and just get going, if he could. Major Miles’s schedules tended to make that impossible some days, but today was not a day that Mauser needed to be especially present in the worst, most demanding of tasks, so he was just sitting in one of the lounge rooms—the one that still had a semi-functioning coffee machine—waiting for the energy to face the new day, which usually came at lunch, when the day has halfway done.

Finishing the last of his bitter coffee, he heard a knock on the door, and then a sheepish face peek in and immediately express relief at having found another human being at the crack of dawn.

“Good morning, sir,” the newcomer said, sporting a quiet and polite smile in spite of the early hour. Mauser shook his head at the mention of ‘sir’, it certainly had been a while since someone had addressed him thus. “I’ve a package for the general assigned to this fort. Where could I find her to make my delivery?”

“She’s—uh—” He had no idea how to word ‘she’s still asleep, probably, and will be for a while’ without making it sound as undignified as it was. Who even delivered packages at six in the morning? “I’ll fetch her for you,” he said, regretting it as soon as it was out. But someone would have to do it, better him than a poor delivery boy who’d probably not slept much if he was here already all the way from North City. “You can wait here, if there’s anything you need signed.”

“Yes, actually,” the man said, taking a seat. “Thank you.”

Mauser tried not to think about how today was not his day and how he had definitely not helped make it any less easy on him. What could this delivery possibly be? He wondered about it. Not many things got delivered so early in the day, and certainly none of the staples came in such a fashionable individualistic manner. This had to be something personal and he should definitely ignore the pang of curiosity sitting on his chest, mostly because being curious about it could only get him in trouble. You didn’t pry into the life of those who led you and you did not judge it if you accidentally found out about something that went on in it, Mauser had learned it on his first day, when Olivier had taught him the exact kind of unforgiveness she lived by. Time later, as well, he’d discovered how little she actually meant that and how much effort she put into being who everyone else thought her to be. It was a strange equilibrium of facades and roles that everyone learned in the end. It was their lives, after all.

He stood before her door, once he’d found it, and tried not to feel like that twenty-something kid who’d been sent to the north, a land he didn’t know and a land he’d been told ate you alive for breakfast. He was a man who had fought the general herself and been on the brink of winning more than once, and he just wanted his peace and quiet today.

He knocked twice and twice the silence answered. He wasn’t sure what the next step was, he wasn’t even sure the general kept her door locked at night—and she probably should, so maybe she did—and he wasn’t about to bring it down with a hard slam of his shoulder.

In the end, he tried for the handle and found that, indeed, she hadn’t locked it. The floor creaked as he pushed the door open, careful not to make any more noise, and he could barely breathe without feeling guilty. For some reason, he was terrified of waking her before he meant to.

He walked towards the bed, trying not to trip in the dark, and then he noticed all of a sudden that his boss was not alone in the bed. His heart almost leapt out of his chest and then began to beat so fast he thought for a moment that was it.

He had literally irrupted one of those scenes Buccaneer and company liked to brag about having been witness to, and he had no wish at all to _keep_ seeing the scene unfold. The rumors were true, and the rumors were _bland_ in comparison to reality. The two stars of Briggs’ freshest gossip did not only share a certain feeling of kinship but a bed. No one had dared dream of this, and now he had the proof—just not the guts to make it official among the men. If Olivier turned on the bed right now, awake, he’d be caught staring.

He had to act now.

Gently as he could, and trying not to touch the sleeping woman beside his boss, he shook Olivier’s shoulder.

“General,” he called in a whisper. “Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but there’s a man downstairs who has something for you.”

He felt Olivier take a patience-gathering breath, then she opened her eyes at him.

“What has this place become? A tavern for messengers?” she muttered.

“No, sir, I…” Mauser tried to say. “It seemed urgent.”

“I’ll be right down. Tell him to wait.” She roused slowly—he imagined she did it so she wouldn’t wake Zinnia accidentally. Mauser would probably die of shame if that happened. “Can you do that?”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“Then don’t just stand there and go,” Olivier ordered, as kindly as she could. It was too early and the slight throbbing in the front of her head confirmed it, she must have slept around three hours, and now the day had just begun, demanding her presence. 

* * *

 

All it took was a quick signature, letting the delivery boy take a coffee, which he drank mostly out of complacency, and then everyone who was already awake had decided to come snoop. These men were thirsty for distractions, and the last thing she needed was to have them feast on them while she herself struggled to even consider this new stage in her life a _distraction._

The mattress was. A huge one, too. A magnificently huge distraction for everyone to see. And they were seeing it, gaping at it wide-eyed like they had never seen a mattress big enough for two people. Not here, they hadn’t. There were no rules about who could sneak out in the middle of the night to sleep with who, just as there were no king-sized beds. If someone wanted to share a bed with someone else, they would just have to make do with what they had.

They… Olivier had never felt so ungrateful for not being part of that ‘they’. The stares felt like hellfire against the back of her neck as the delivery boy took off and left her with a mattress to publicly haul up on her shoulder and carry all the way up to her room. If she’d planned it, it could not have turned out to be any more embarrassing.

But she had no choice. She’d made her bed, now she had to lie in it. No matter the cost, no matter whose avid eyes were happily spying over her actions, looking for a loophole that wasn’t a loophole, something to exploit, something to lust over. And she couldn’t blame them. Even from her perspective, just standing there, next to a mattress that would barely fit in her room, counted as hilarious. And she would have laughed if she hadn’t been in the center of it.

“Need a hand?”

“The _fort_ needs a hand. You’re loitering. Move,” she just said, and started to part the crowd, a woman and a mattress. It made it easier that way, the gatherings of men just moved to the side, and she pretended they weren’t there.

When the doors of the elevator closed, she let all of her air out.

“Why did this have to happen when everyone can see?” she whispered to herself.

The next thing she’d know, there would be a paper in her desk one morning about her relationship with a nobody from nowhere, and everyone would already be doing what they’d excelled at for fifteen years: writing about her personal life as if it mattered, covering every single thing she’d done for the country in gossip.

And she’d just have to deal. Dealing was part of the job, and the part of it that mattered _less._

She could still feel the eyes observing her, from the stairs, the corridors, the people walking around her floor like they had never seen her before.

She dragged the beast of a mattress all the way to the door, and she just kicked it open, placing the mattress against the wall and making sure it stayed upright, then she walked in.

 _Hello, I’m back. I know it’s early but our Achilles’ heel has just arrived from North City. Please never let me make a decision like this ever again,_ she would have said. But she was a stoic woman, strong and of sound mind. She could handle this without whining like a Central soldier.

Zinnia was caught sitting up on the bed, her face twisted into an adorable expression that perfectly conveyed how little she liked getting up in the mornings. She saw the huge mattress resting against the door frame and her face changed completely.

“Oh, shit,” she just said, and she needn’t have said more.

“It’s here.”

Olivier pulled at it to get it through the door but it didn’t bulge one bit, and Zinnia certainly had no hopes of it getting into the room any time soon. She doubted it might even fit through the frame _and_ in the limited space they had.

She quickly pushed the covers away and stood up to help.

“Wait,” she said, gesturing to give Olivier indications. “Push it back out, and then I’ll try and pull from here.”

Olivier did as told, backing out slowly.

“Right, now,” Zinnia said, grabbing the edge of the mattress that protruded into the room. “I got it. Ready?”

They had to fumble for a bit, because the mattress was slightly taller than the door, but it worked and once it was in it fell against Olivier’s desk.

She walked in, too, to reassess the damage. Nothing had beeb broken, apparently. That table of hers was sturdy.

Without a second thought, the both of them automatically set to taking care of the smaller bed they wouldn’t be using now. It was pushed and dismantled to the opposite corner of the room, where it barely even fit, and with one last effort, the two panting woman pushed the new mattress to its final location and then looked at each other for a moment or two.

Zinnia just dropped down on the mattress, exhausted, and gave Olivier a very concrete (and not as seductive as she meant it to be) look from there, smoothing the surface of their new bed with the back of her hands and her knuckles.

Olivier sighed, not appearing as fed up with it as she meant to, and cornered her against the flat surface of the bed.

“Teasing me?” she only said. 

* * *

 

_There was so little space in the room now, it was barely a square with a mattress on a corner of it, taking all the spotlight in its bumpy and soft surface. We both looked at it, like we look at each other, and we knew we’d end up closing the door behind us, isolating the mattress and us from the rest of the fort. Even if it was just for a moment or two. It would be enough. A moment is enough, against the backdrop of hours we’ve spent pretending not to long for something else. A moment was enough the second we touched the mattress, ours the same way this whole place is yours to command and mine to experience. a moment is enough now, when my words echo the touch of your fingertips on my collarbone and my hands on your waist, and your hair brushing against my chest, and my lips murmuring words that are only yours to hear. Like this mattress is ours._

“Listen, I’m going to have to take a day off.” Buccaneer said right after he’d finished reading it out loud for Miles to hear. In spite of the many, many times they’d been _advised_ to stay away from this stuff, they both kept coming back—and Buccaneer knew that Miles enjoyed it. “Zinnia keeps reinventing herself. Who said she can’t write? She _can._ And she works wonders at it. I need to ask her to write me a piece sometime… about me.”

“Keep reading. In silence. Please.”

“I can’t read if I’m in _silence,_ though…” He chuckled.

“You know what I mean. Come on.”

Buccaneer was immensely pleased, of course. Slowly but surely Miles was regaining his interest in gossip, and he was proud of having been the one to teach him the ways of it. Time… and time again, truth be told.

Suddenly, Miles squealed. He’d kept on reading when Buccaneer had interrupted. His squeal was an odd noise to be aware of, because it didn’t exactly sound like a normal squeal, it sounded as if someone had stepped on his toes. His voice remained the same, just… strained.

“What? What is it?” Buccaneer pressed it.

Miles gulped. “Keep reading.”

Buccaneer did, scanning the page at the speed of light for what came after the moment and the mattress. Then his eyes opened as wide as they never had, and after half a year of these things existing right under his nose, that was saying something.

He gave a shrill yell, and in that moment Miles regretting his entire existence.

“I need a minute,” Buccaneer said, appropriate the mood of the scene by sitting dramatically on his boss’s chair like he wouldn’t shake in fear of getting told off because of it. “I can’t believe they’ve had sex.”

Miles glared at him, but Buccaneer could tell he was a little shocked still. It made no sense to pretend that it was _big news._ They might all at some point have imagined, daydreamed about the relationship and its progress, but there was a stretch between that and plain old picturing them… in compromising situations.

Even so—

“I can…” Miles mumbled. And he didn’t dare doubt that Buccaneer, despite all his bulky personality and his lewd jokes, had not considered this in the slightest, being too focused on the _formal_ parts of it and the repercussions on Olivier’s usually terrible mood.

“No, I mean, obviously I can _imagine._ But…” And then Buccaneer made incoherent blabber noises. “She wrote about it. She left it here, and not exactly for Olivier to read this time. I mean…” He smirked. “Zinnia could just _tell_ her in person.”

“They have this going on, we won’t be the ones to discourage it. I just… yeah, this was clearly a declaration of intentions, of sorts.”

“This is like putting it up on the corkboard downstairs.”

“Exactly,” Miles agreed. He was red in the face now. Maybe he was the one who had trouble with this sort of stuff, especially since his crush on the general hadn’t entirely faded in the past decade or so. “Well, not quite. But… if this is here, it’s because she no longer cares about hiding.”

“Could you imagine?” Buccaneer laughed. “Having to hide from having a _life_?”

“Says the man who has a chance at one in less than a year and can’t bother finding accommodation for it.”

“Miles, we’re discussing something important here. Plus, I’m building a house, we’ve talked about this before. Come on, focus. They _do_ want us to know.”

“Or Zinnia does. Would Olivier, in her right mind, allow for us to read something so _intimate_?” Miles pondered.

Buccaneer looked all the more excited now. He definitely had a knack for getting into messes like this one, and he _definitely_ enjoyed finding out about forbidden things.

“She doesn’t know this is here yet,” he crooned.

“I can’t stand around and wait to find out. We need to disperse.”

“You can’t disperse, you _work_ here,” Buccaneer said, matter-of-factly. “And I can’t either, I’m here to ask her about something important. My route needs approval once and for all and this woman just won’t give it.”

Miles heard footsteps coming and his heart almost stopped in his chest. The day could still get better, apparently. If it wasn’t her, then someone else would probably find out about what had happened, because he was sure Buccaneer wouldn’t be able to keep his excitement to himself. If it was… He’d better not think about that.

Quickly as he could, Miles returned to his desk, feigning to be busy with something. When he looked up, the footsteps were louder still and Buccaneer still had the piece of paper in his hand.

“At least stand away from the desk to pretend you know nothing,” he hissed at Buccaneer.

“At this point, Miles, who cares?”

“I do!”

 But, silently, Miles just had to agree with him. This had all gotten so crazy there was no reason to stay caught up, you would _be_ caught up eventually.

Olivier’s steps grew louder on the wooden floors until she irrupted into the room like a storm—a content, powerful storm that could crush the two of them in her hand or pardon them like she already had in many an occasion. It no longer felt like being trapped to Miles (because to Buccaneer it had always been a game he could win), but more like routine.

She came in, didn’t greet him, and watched them quietly as she took her usual seat. _What on earth is wrong with them today?_ Of course, she knew they were probably just idle right now, hanging out like two teenagers, like the newbies tended to the first few months. But it bothered her, barely enough to constitute a problem, yet slightly.

Then she saw the gift this morning had made for her.

One quick look and she settled that she would definitely need to hide Zinnia in her room for the rest of both their lives. _She_ would hide if need be.

Now she knew why those two men were so idly hanging around her desk, like they couldn’t be hovering around Miles’s desk instead.

Her eyes barely skimmed the few pages Zinnia had written. _When has she even had time to write this and leave it here for me?_ Zinnia’s efficiency regarding this was a secret she didn’t even think she wanted to unravel.

Then she blushed like she never had before at the sight of certain phrases that weeks ago would not have made it into her daily collection of words.

 _Oh dear god and these two have read it, haven’t they?_ She might as well just parade it around now, then. This was the equivalent of directly grabbing Buccaneer on the side after the mattress… incident, and whispering to his ear that she’d slept with her girlfriend that morning.

Glorious, magnificent, fabulous. At least now they _knew_ for real and didn’t need to fumble for confirmation—not that Olivier wasn’t hoping she still had to officially give them all one. Eventually, though. Very eventually. After this, she was going to try and be less seen, even.

“Don’t just stand there,” Olivier said, acting more firm and normal than she felt. She needed a vacation—she hadn’t had one in fifteen years, but she sure would take two days off right now, if only to not have to think about the butterflies she had as second-in-command, fluttering by hoping to catch some juicy news to live off. “Tell me, you must have strong opinions by now.”

Buccaneer fell for it. As per usual.

“Oh, I’m seriously considering commissioning her, she is a dedicated writer. And she has a special talent for sentimental scenes.”

Olivier stood up, her face pink like the sunset.

“What do I have to do,” she said slowly, “so you’ll both stay away from my private belongings? I will do it, I will spare no expense.”

“At this point, nothing could really work,” Miles said, still shocked. “There’s talk everywhere. This… escalates a little, but so far only we have seen.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” she said, biting.

“No…” Miles said.

Buccaneer chuckled.

“She nailed you, boss,” he said. “Those descriptions of you as the ‘sturdy mountain in her way’.” He laughed again. “Totally picture it that way.”

“Oh, she nailed me alright,” Olivier let out, going for an icy tone that sounded more like anger in a process of repression. “Fuck, I should not have said that…” she muttered right away. She honestly couldn’t believe the absurdity of it all. She and Zinnia had spoken—briefly and lightly—about a future in which people… _knew._ But this went beyond people knowing. And the way she saw it, the solutions were as followed: buy a lock and give Zinnia the key to leave her writings inside, get Zinnia to stop writing, not give a shit who read those writings.

And she liked neither.

Taking a deep and, she hoped, calming breath, Olivier said:

“You’re going to leave this room now, sworn to secrecy, or you’ll be doing dishes till the day Drachma attacks, and we’re all going to forget this happened.”

She could see in Buccaneer’s mind: _I’m pretty sure Zinnia won’t._

But it was out of her hands now. They would keep quiet, because despite their insistence on being up to date on what happened in her life, they didn’t go around sharing the information to its smallest detail. But it definitely was at a level now that no one could control. The gossip had grown into many realities, each person saw things a different way, and the truth of it was complex to accurately portray in a retelling of events.

It was what it was. An experience, a challenge, and a dream. After Ianthe, after the sacrifice she’d made, Olivier had not believed for one second something like this was possible for her. Until it’d been smashed against her chest and she’d knelt to pick it up before it reached the ground. Such a precious thing… and maybe the choice to share it as it was was the last choice she had, because sharing it in general was already happening.

In the minds of gossip-drawn Buccaneer and shy Miles, in the minds of young Austin and terrified Mauser. In the minds of everyone, Olivier was no longer made of unwavering ice. The remaining ice of her wept.

Her spring was here. 

* * *

 

That night, as promised, she’d almost forgotten about it. Olivier got lost in words more easily now that ever before. She clung to them and then let them go, slippery between her fingers, to focus on those that came next, hungry to be believed.

These moments before bed were the true mirror of what she harbored in her heart, the inability to be who she was and a desire to become that the second the door to the room was closed. She had plenty to improve, and she had plenty to say.

She wanted to… somehow _understand_ how these things worked when they were long-term. Whatever she’d had in the past that she’d thought would last hadn’t, and she’d been left with nothing, a big emptiness in her chest and in her arms. Olivier had it all now.

She just had to fit all the pieces of her life together and had to find a way to fit Zinnia’s in her own life too. Wasn’t this what building a relationship was like? Just completing a puzzle of two different experiences, two different minds and bodies that had agreed on being one?

They sat on the mattress because it was still too early to go to sleep, and they interrupted each other in the telling of their stories.

There was a bit of everything in those stories. Adventure and boredom, people who had brought kindness and people who had turned their days bitter, wars and times of peace, and memories that were still present in their minds and would probably always be.

You didn’t just forget what had turned you into you.

And, of course, the mattress came up. Because it was too obvious a truth to be sitting on.

“If you hadn’t stolen my brain and replaced it with _mush,_ I might still be able to bring a proper reprimand to their doors, order them to shut up, or… to be less begging, find something that will keep them busy—especially the captain.”

She had a few ideas on the matter, she just had no clue how to act on any of them without getting caught. Whatever went on in her office ended up being common knowledge to Miles, and eventually would get passed down to Buccaneer himself. And he wouldn’t hesitate to add that to the permanent teasing. It seemed to Olivier that this… throwback to feelings had inspired the captain to return to his old practices when she’d been but a new recruit surrounded by Briggs bears.

“I didn’t do anything to your brain, you did that on your own,” Zinnia said, repressing a chuckle.

“There has to be a better explanation as to why I’ve become the version of me that… that didn’t care about breaking the mold loudly.”

Zinnia tsked. “Haven’t you been doing that for the past many years? You’re the master of it. When people need help ignoring other people’s opinions, it’s you they look to.”

“I’m still blaming you,” Olivier said anyway. “If you hadn’t moved north—”

“Unluckily,” Zinnia said, humorous, “I have.”

“Very unluckily.” And they both had no doubts that this was like one of those things _very mushy_ people said, which deep down really hid an ‘I love you’ more than anything else. Neither of them could think of this little situation of many combined factors as unlucky.

“Maybe we should just find _you_ a hobby,” Zinnia said. “You’ll be distracted enough to stop caring about other people’s.” She laughed now, because… the last thing she could picture in her mind was Olivier Armstrong _finding_ a hobby. She imagined her knitting by a fire or frowning as she tried to understand a philosophical theory everyone gave up on. The day Olivier got a hobby, the universe would have folded in on itself and become a parody.

Olivier, though, didn’t think of a proper hobby to entertain herself because the concept as such had been erased from her mind, but she immediately thought back to alkahestry and the unsolvable mystery of where all the information had gone and … was she really going to have to go to Xing herself to find out? Was that even a thing she could do? She didn’t ask Zinnia, it wasn’t something that needed to be out in the open. She immediately canceled the hypothetical trip in her mind, though, she had a fort to man and a girl to please.

“Hacking people with the sword doesn’t count,” Zinnia went on, untiring. “Cards? Does anyone actually play cards here?” She hadn’t seen anyone gathering around doing that. The national sport here was gossip and coffee. “Books? I have books, I could lend them to you.”

“I’ve a whole library at my disposal.” Olivier arched her eyebrow and crossed her arms, which owing to her horizontal disposition was a thousand times funnier than as usual.

“Yeah, and you’ve also had fifteen years to read through it all, and you probably have. You could pick up the habit. I’m sure I’ve titles you’re not familiar with.”

Olivier could not understand why Zinnia had any interest in sharing her books with her.

“I’ve also taken a look at your… titles. Not my choice of reading material.”

“Nitpicky, are we?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t know. What did you used to do when you weren’t here?”

When she was young, and had free time and cities to wander in, and people to ferociously kiss in dark alleys…

Olivier couldn’t help raising the eyebrow again, making Zinnia blush at the realization that there had been more than just kisses in those alleys.

“Okay,” Zinnia settled it, “not _that_.”

“ _Occasionally_ that.”

“We’re talking hobby here, something I’m not needed for.”

“…I’ve a few ideas in mind myself,” Olivier commented, biting down on an impolite smirk.

“And can I hear about such fantastic ideas?”

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this hour, and after two weeks of a LOTR marathon, I am prompted to quote Gandalf: “A wizard is never late. Nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.”  
> But I would also like to add, in light of this quote, that I totally forgot to post the chapter today because I was finishing up on Chapter 57 already and got super excited about that. Never trust a writer to post in time, that is my wisdom for today XD


	35. A house for the houseless

“You’re really not going to tell me what you’re planning to do with your free time?” Zinnia teased. It had been going on since the night before, and she really was not going to drop it for the life of her. Watching Olivier pretend this wasn’t bothering her was worth everything. She did this thing where she just looked around, as if bored, and had this air to her as if none of it affected her. But her ears gave her away: they were red at the tips. “Is it work? Are you not telling me because it’s work?” Then Zinnia whispered, stabbing her fork in the air at her: “Or are you not telling me because we’re in _public_?”

Olivier smirked calmly. “Perhaps I just like keeping you in the dark.”

Zinnia leaned back on the bench. Olivier was absolutely capable of such a thing. She sure loved her secrets, the little things she wasn’t saying, even when they were so obvious, there in midair, grabbing at her. Zinnia didn’t know how Olivier managed to stay away from her own secrets, but she wasn’t about to ask. It was funnier to just gently coax it out of her.

“Yeah, right. What dark?” she said. “Give me two hours to study your face and I will tell you what you’re planning.”

If only it was so easy, but Zinnia was convinced this was something silly enough that wouldn’t take too long to guess. After all, the number of things one could do in this fort to fend off boredom wasn’t precisely high. Mostly exercise and reading—stop counting.

“Unless you want to come up to the office with me and risk having someone see you sitting on my lap—”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad plan…” Zinnia muttered, laughing.

“—otherwise I can’t give you two hours. Might have to do with two minutes. Before everyone comes in.”

But ‘everyone’ was already here, they just weren’t paying attention. The few soldiers who had started on their early mornings and earl gray tea seemed to be more interested in other things, which was… unusual in them. Maybe it was just too early for anyone to care about anything that wasn’t complaining about being up and the coffee being cold. Even if that ‘anything’ might be something as overt as the only two women in the fort being everything but subtle.

Zinnia quit eating, threw her growing hair back and blinked flirtily. She was slowly getting more and more confident when it was time to flex her flirting muscles. It’d been a nice road of discovery for Olivier, who up until recently had really thought herself mad for being so desperately attracted to someone who couldn’t be clumsier at the arts of seduction.

“Are you saying I have permission?” Zinnia said.

“I’m not going to oppose to it,” Olivier said, just as calmly. She played it as if none of this had anything to do with her, when in reality her brain was already plotting around it, to see how much she could give up without Zinnia realizing it, “if that’s what you mean, no.”

“You like to be seen, don’t you?” Zinnia commented. And she was already staring, drinking details in and sucking her breath in too because the crush feelings were present once again, making her feel like static inside, like when you lost feeling in your toes. Not a day went by that she didn’t feel a bit like the woman who had first arrived in the north, lost and underdressed.

 She spent a minute watching Olivier now, allowed to and not ready to ever give that up, ransacking her brains.

“You’re going back to using the punch bag,” Zinnia stated.

“No,” Olivier said.

“You’re going to … take up writing because you’ve seen how well it performs when it’s time to express feelings?”

Olivier hardly managed to muffle a chuckle. “No.”

“Knitting?” Zinnia was running out of options, but she still had no idea if she was getting warmer. What was a hobby to the woman that didn’t have any?

“Why the hell would I knit?” Olivier replied, laughing as well. The idea was nothing but hilarious. It was a pastime that people took up in their old age, to keep their digits mobile, but her? What use could she have for knitting, other than overthinking about patterns and not about work?

“What do I know?” Zinnia said. “It’s cold, isn’t it? You could knit yourself a scarf.”

“I don’t _wear_ scarves.”

“Too pretty a neck to hide it?” Zinnia asked, raising her eyebrow.

“For once, spot on.” Olivier smirked again, pleased. She was not in the mood for denying that it felt good to receive compliments in the exact circumstances that she shouldn’t, right in the heart of long ears and longer tongues. But she didn’t care much.

This, while dangerous, made her heart beat faster and entertained her mind far better than any so-called hobby might.

Zinnia pressed on, fishing more options out of nowhere, untiring. She was so lost, the poor thing. It was almost endearing. Olivier was _almost_ deciding to postpone breakfast and just hide in some room and let that endearment swirl around her like the wind on top of the wall.

“Are you … going to, um, learn how to cook?” Zinnia asked.

“I know how to cook.”

“Reading?” Olivier shook her head, amused. “ _More_ fencing? Horse-riding? Light bulb collecting?” Olivier made a face at that. Coldest than cold, the flower girl was. A little further and her pretty petals would get covered in frost.

“Light bulb collecting? Seriously?”

“What? It’s not that?” Zinnia feigned being offended by not having found out yet.

“I thought you’d said you would know after two minutes.” Olivier took a sip of her drink and made eye contact. “They are up, I’m afraid. Now, what?”

“Now you tell me.” Zinnia shrugged. “It’s simple.”

And it was. Olivier should have given her those two hours. Eventually, she was certain Zinnia would have read it off her slightly kinder eyes. It didn’t take long to realize that the ice was weeping, and when that happened, you had two choices: you either helped melt it away faster or you returned it to its solid state.

What did _she_ want to happen, though? She’d asked herself that question more often than not, lately. The person that she was relied on her presenting herself as the unconquerable queen of ice, of the north. If she gave that up, she would be morphing into someone else entirely. And she didn’t entirely dislike the new warmth that now sat comfortably in her heart.

Slowly, her hand slithered on the table, her fingers coiling gently around Zinnia’s wrist in a soft gesture, and her eyes met the flower girl’s in a way that normally she didn’t allow to happen outside of heir room. It spoke volumes about everything they hoped they were managing to keep hidden for now.

And there were people around, busy with their meals and their sleepy eyes and their silly stories. They just didn’t seem to be paying attention. And soon, even if they didn’t, this little contact that hid so much more would cease to be invisible to them.

Olivier smiled. _The sooner they know, the sooner we can stop being proper._

“I’ll simply tell you, then.” 

* * *

 

It wasn’t a hobby per se, it perhaps was just entertainment. A way to pass the time, a way to make time gentler on all of them. Her duty turned kinder, under the right light. But ever since she’d come up with it, it had made sense to her. Nobody else would do this job, precisely because the man who would most benefit from it refused to accept that next year he would be living a very different life.

It fell to her, then. And she didn’t think it a bad idea. After all, she had given the order.

That morning she sat in her office with a goal. She would find the perfect home for Buccaneer. Somewhere secluded, but not too much, so he could exert his social muscles at ease. Somewhere small that heated quickly, since he despised the cold, as many men here did. Somewhere close to the wall he so loved.

It shouldn’t be this hard, but Olivier was having trouble with it. She’d sent Miles to fetch some more atlases from the library the second he’d walked in, hoping she might find something else to work with than North City. Buccaneer would never accept any type of housing that far away from Briggs. She knew he would like to live nearby, so he could visit sometimes, instruct the newbies on the life they were to live there.

Olivier smiled faintly. Buccaneer’s initiation speeches were always inspirational. They had been, at least, to her.

Now, using Miles to keep Buccaneer in check had evolved into using Miles to keep _Miles_ ’s head somewhere else that wasn’t Buccaneer’s meddling ways. Probably not very clever, but it was kinder than locking them up. She couldn’t lock them up, not now. Not after it had… _worked._

He arrived to her office not much longer after.

“I brought everything you needed,” he said, gently leaving the books on her desk.

“Thank you.”

“Looking to move out?” he asked, sitting down. It was certainly strange that she was looking into this now. As far as he knew, she would live and die at her post, never straying from the path she had once chosen above all things.

“It’s not for me,” Olivier said at once, opening one of the tomes Miles had brought and skimming it for whatever she was looking for, “it’s for the captain.”

“Ah,” Miles only sad, dumb-founded.

“Since he won’t conduct any of this paperwork on his own, I might as well do it instead. It might make it easier on him when it’s time to leave.”

“I doubt he’ll be happy with anything less than a cottage two feet away from the fort.” Miles said, remembering what Buccaneer had told him once about moving somewhere not too far from all he knew.

“I will find him somewhere proper to live,” Olivier reassured him. “Close enough to here, if that’s what he wants.”

“I’m sure he would appreciate that,” Miles said, conciliatory.

Olivier made a hmph noise.

Nothing in the world would currently make her happier than pleasing Buccaneer, if only that meant he would occupy himself with far more decent activities than keeping tabs on her sentimental life. The recently birthed sentimental life.

She really did feel like she was twenty, lost in a world of men made by men for men, with Buccaneer as the perfect model of a Briggs’ soldier. He still was the model, but that was because he had changed. She remembered a far more annoying man who thought himself on top of the pyramid. This was… definitely a sign that Buccaneer had somewhat mellowed with age, and a reminder that it was her responsibility to bring him safely to the day of his retirement, hard as that would be on every soul on Briggs.

_Perhaps he is our spirit far more than I will ever be_ , she thought. After all, Olivier had only been here for fifteen years, Buccaneer’s whole life had taken place up north, fighting for the wall even if the wall had never had to stand for any cause before.

She couldn’t take the wall away from him, even if she could take _him_ away from the wall. There had to be something around here that she could use, but there were few towns close to the border, and Iver was not an option. He would create a newsstand there, sell gossip like he gave out smiles, and he’d be even more present than he was now.

Perhaps they should consider it, at least. The town was well-situated, at the far end of the valley where vastness spread towards the mountains and the wall that joined them, and not too far away from North City’s resources. It was quaint, tranquil, and their people were fairly nice to the newcomer, if Zinnia’s testimony had counted for anything. Olivier remembered her as standing out from the crowd, because of how obviously foreign she was, not because they didn’t accept her.

_I wonder what she has to say about this, if she knows of some place Buccaneer can go…_ She wouldn’t be wasting any of her time if she casually mentioned her search at lunch or something. And she wouldn’t be wasting it either if she asked directly. But even Olivier herself knew that asking was too definite, she needed her wiggling room first.

But, indeed, she brought it up at lunch, when she was certain that the captain was far enough away that he wouldn’t be eavesdropping. The heated conversation between the other six men at the table made talking privately both harder and easier; harder, because she had to raise her voice and therefore someone might hear, and easier because they were all preoccupied as it was arguing about whether it had been proven that snowflakes had unique shapes.

Zinnia, of course, reacted the only way she could to the news that Olivier was researching the area to find Buccaneer a postretirement home: curiously.

“How did it go? Found anything interesting?”

“Not really. Nothing decent enough. It’s all old houses around here. Most of them are taken, most have no owner but still cannot be reappropriated without a warrant.”

“Mine is a rental,” Zinnia said, suspiciously making distracted eye contact with her.

Olivier blinked, confused for a moment.

“But you’ll be living in it, won’t you?” she said, realizing afterwards that something wasn’t quite right or else Zinnia wouldn’t have offered. “Or are you really up to sharing living quarters with Buccaneer?”

For a moment, Zinnia wasn’t too sure what to say to that. Obviously, what she had in mind had nothing to do with sharing a house with Buccaneer, of all people. But she… hadn’t thought about this in depth as to word it appropriately now. She didn’t even know what she wanted yet.

“Well, I… I’m not sure I’m going to go back there,” Zinnia finally said, so gently that Olivier almost had to ask her to repeat it again.

“You want to stay _here_?”

Olivier had never really had a feeling that Zinnia especially liked it around the fort, more like she had grown used to it and complacent with what it had to offer, but nothing else. At least the way Olivier saw it, Zinnia remained a civilian in blue garments, camouflaged but still distinctly foreign. _Foreign wherever she goes, this flower of mine…_ A summer bloom surviving the winter, and managing to do a little more than just surviving it.

“Why not?” she just shrugged, suddenly wrapping her fingers around her glass of water, as if it held all the answers within.

“I don’t know,” Olivier replied, taken aback. “I guess I just… thought you wouldn’t.”

“That was _before._ Things have changed a little,” Zinnia said coyly.

“Maybe it will do you good to remain on the village,” Olivier said, suddenly panicking that things were _this_ long-term and that she wouldn’t know how to plan for it, “have a decent job. You’ll be able to send money to your parents again.”

Zinnia couldn’t help but just _stop_ at that, all her train of thought refusing to be fueled by coal anymore. If they had written to her about this, she had no way of getting those letters. And she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t all have been from her mother, almost screaming at her on paper to get back home and do her duty. Zinnia’s duty, as of now, was working in the perfectly geared fort of Briggs. And she wasn’t giving it up for a daycare job and a part-time dicing meat.

“You can look into my house,” she rephrased it, slower. “For Buccaneer. I can find something else. And don’t worry about my parents, they’re adults. They can manage without my savings for a while.” But deep down she worried, at least the little bit that she allowed herself to. A little bit of a peek into the small pool of ink of worry that was settling somewhere in her.

“You sure?” Olivier asked, her frown insistent.

“Yeah.”

“I know you’re serious about the house. I mean about your family. I can make an arrangement if you need me to, adjust the budget—”

It was uttered so seriously, the same way that she spoke of official military matters, and Zinnia had no doubt Olivier meant it with all her serious heart. But she still unwrapped her hand from around the glass to put it on Olivier’s to stop her from saying more.

“You’re not cutting _money_ from your budgets so you can further my mum’s crazy daughter issues,” Zinnia said softly.

Olivier smirked now, a little relieved that things were more or less normal and that Zinnia had at least some of them clear. “Daughter issues?”

“I don’t know what else to call it. And shut up.” Zinnia looked away. “I know your mum has them too.”

Olivier scoffed, throwing her hair away. Her scar was visible for a moment, long enough that she hurried to cover it with her hair again. “My mum probably beats yours at it.”

“Exactly. Shut up.”

They ate in silence for a while, both trying to pay attention to other people’s conversations in order to forget about their own, but then Olivier just couldn’t take it any longer. If Zinnia needed anything, her own need to act grew and grew until it surpassed Zinnia’s own.

“I’m serious, though,” she said.

“Oh, I know. You’re always serious.” Zinnia finally looked her in the eye again and smiled a little. Just a little, but it still made Olivier’s heart do somersaults in her chest. “I kinda like it.”

And Olivier blushed. ‘Kinda’ hid more than just a gradient of ‘yes’.

“But what kind of a person would I be, if I let you steal money for my family?” Zinnia added, glancing down at her plate. Then, she added, softly: “And what kind of a person would you become, if you stole money for me?”

_The kind of person who cares too much,_ Olivier thought with a dark smile. But truth be told, that was the kind of person who she had always been; she’d just never been allowed to show it. 

* * *

 

Days later, the idea had more or less taken a shape. Not quite definite, and certainly malleable enough that new ideas could affect it, but at least Olivier had something to work with now. Something solid. She just needed to tell Buccaneer, who up until then knew nothing about his boss’s sneaking out behind his back to prepare for his retirement.

“I think I’ll simply take him out one day, show him the town now that it’s empty, and let him decide what options he likes.”

“Wait, you’re going to take him to Iver?”

“I want to tie everything up before he’s legally bound to move out, so that’s the best solution I could come up with.”

“I’m not criticizing it, I’m just… surprised —very—that you’d be breaking it out to him so soon. Weren’t you dealing with everything?”

“Well, I can’t exactly send him off to live somewhere he hasn’t approved of. He might as well just continue residing here.”

“Can _I_ go?” Zinnia asked sheepishly.

“What?”

“I mean, if it’s okay. I know I probably shouldn’t, but… it’s been a while.”

Olivier blinked.

“You don’t need to ask me for permission. If you want to ride there one given day, you’re free to do it.”

“Your men can’t. Then I can’t either.”

“You’re not my _men_.”

“That doesn’t matter now. Can I come with you? Are you taking Miles too?”

Olivier sighed. “Miles is both our moral compass, of course I’ll ask him to accompany us. And you can as well, if you wish to.”

“Why are you talking like you’re in a period drama?”

Olivier sneered. “I do it when I’m nervous.”

“And you’re nervous about this… because?”

“He’s the first soldier ever to retire under my command. I want to make him proud.”

Zinnia hugged her because Olivier could be so _cute_ sometimes.

“You know you already have.”

Olivier felt hugged.

“You’re coming, then?”

“Yes, I think I’d like that.”

“Me too,” Olivier said.

So the next morning Olivier grabbed Buccaneer by his coat and dragged him to the side to tell him to get ready for a ride after breakfast. He looked surprised, as was expectable, but Miles’s face was extraordinarily more expressive when he was informed he was to go with them.

Thus, the four of them silently rode south after eating. The tension was palpable, but no one did anything to cut it. It was a peaceful sort of tension, which didn’t bother them much and was just sort of there, existing between them like air.

The minutes passed slowly as it began to snow around them. The snowflakes seemed to not be falling, but dancing downwards in tiny spirals. It was a soft snow, it wouldn’t form a cascade of white around them for the moment; they would be able to ride in this weather.

There came a time that Olivier just decided to ride on, looking forward, and pretending this wasn’t one of those uncomfortable situations in life that made your throat dry and your heart pound. She reminded herself she had nothing to fear, that she was here on a mission to make all of their lives easier.

And by the time she’d already psyched herself up into riding chin-up, they were already there, in a town that had been temporarily deserted. It was a block of boxes at first, covered in snow from ancient storms, and a layer of cobblestone beneath it all.

The horses’ hooves clacked against it when they began to walk on stone floors rather than snow, and its echoes made the town feel more ghost than it already was. And the ghosts weren’t just the people who used to inhabit it but the memories themselves.

Memories that Olivier’s mind was replaying in silence, exaggerating the colors of them in contrast to the monochrome feel of the winter. Zinnia’s yellow dress, her green ice cream, the color of her skin, the blue of the sky…

She looked at Zinnia out of the corner of her eye and found that the girl was lost in thought as well, probably remembering everything as well. Everything that had united them.

But Zinnia wasn’t just thinking about that. She had suddenly been hit with a wave of powerful nostalgia about the life that had been left behind at Central, a simple frugal life that she’d never wanted and that somehow now she missed, because a part of the person she’d been when had lived in this town had still been the Zinnia who liked Central.

Entering the town from behind rather than from the usual route, Zinnia couldn’t help but drink everything in. The houses of her neighbors, now in such a ruinous state that made her doubt this would be easily fixed in the winter. And she’d broken the glass of a few shops, when she’d still been hiding from the cold—it felt like a lifetime ago.

And then… there it was.

Without noticing it, she tugged at the reins of her horse to make it stop walking. Her house, they were walking past her house. All yellow in the spring, now barely any other shade that wasn’t faint white.

Olivier seemed to notice she was lagging behind. She turned the horse around as Miles and Buccaneer went on. There was a look in Zinnia’s eyes that she didn’t need to decipher.

“Why don’t you go see if there’s… something to salvage?” Olivier said. “Meet us at the square later.”

Zinnia nodded. “Alright.”

She dismounted as Olivier rode away, then tied her horse to a streetlamp, eyes on the house. It had been a while since the last time she had seen it. Although this place had never truly belonged to her, something in her heart felt it as hers anyway. She had lived inside it, she had made it hers.

Treading carefully, she reached the stone stairs of it and couldn’t help but notice that there were no letters under her door, which she’d left open the last time, when Olivier had come rescue her.

Perhaps, if any messenger had really come to Iver since they’d all left, all the letters had been gone with the wind. _No wonder, this is a winter ghost town…_

Slowly, she opened the door and walked in. The blizzards from these past few months had managed to make their way into the living room, now covered partly in snow. It felt strange, to see the warm colors of the place being washed down by all that white; to see the phone hanging from the drawers it rested on; to see the couch frozen and the walls covered in ice. She saw all the things that had never been hers per se but that had made up her life and she knew winter had truly arrived, before its time.

She thought again about what she’d do, when the winter was over. She used to have a plan, she used to think she’d come back here and just keep dreaming of the things that now she had. So now that she had them, what was she supposed to do? She was still a civilian in a world of armed soldiers, and no matter how welcome she’d eventually grown to feel, she knew this wasn’t a place she could stay at infinitely.

But she couldn’t ask Olivier to resign the post that had made her who she was for… _this._ It wouldn’t be fair. Just as it wouldn’t be to impose her presence any longer than just the winter. She supposed she could always return to Iver, continue living the dream but only for a few hours a week, when Olivier could afford taking a trip to the town. Otherwise… all Zinnia would have was the longing in her heart for the woman’s company, and the promise that they’d see each other soon, again, as often as could be.

_Can you live with either option?_ she asked herself, but there was no answer yet. These things took time, as all major life decisions did. And Zinnia thought she was taking it better than Olivier.

If she asked Olivier, she would short-circuit, and she’d ask for time to think it through. Yet there was little to think through. Olivier belonged where she was, sitting on a throne she’d accepted and built with her own two hands, and keeping the world safe. Zinnia couldn’t drag her away from all of that, and if she wanted to be with her, then she’d have to _accept_ the throne as well and watch her girlfriend sit on it, trying to never stand in her way.

But, deep down, she still felt she _was_ in the way—perhaps not of everything, like once or twice before, but in the most obvious of ways. She wasn’t _one_ of them, even if she acted like them, did what they did, and even if she’d learned to mingle. And nothing could change that.

Eventually, Zinnia left the house, making sure to close the door behind her this time, carrying a book she’d found lying around under some summer clothes. She’d been tempted to grab them too, if only to please Olivier—or tease her, any would do—, but she just hadn’t.

She met her and Miles and Buccaneer at the square, as agreed. The three of them seemed to be arguing about the houses and even from a distance Zinnia could hear Buccaneer bellowing that if he came to live here, to such a tiny town, he’d die of boredom in three days tops.

That made her smile.

“Let me assure you that you wouldn’t. There’s more to pay attention to in this ‘tiny town’ than you’d think,” Zinnia said to announce herself, and she winked at the captain.

“That’s because you’re the heart of the gossip, not the receptor,” Buccaneer told her.”

“And thank the heavens for that. What would I gossip about?”

“That’s… exactly my point.”

“Come on, you’re you,” Miles said. “You’d find something interesting enough anywhere.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but… seriously. I doubt there’s more than a hundred people living here. It is tiny.”

Olivier scoffed.

“And what do you think other towns are like? Walls like ours or places like North City?

Buccaneer shut up.

“Take your time to think about it,” Olivier told him as she mounted her own horse, seeing that Zinnia was already atop hers. “But you’ve seen what this town has to offer. It might be really good for you, Julian.”

Zinnia giggled at the name. She’d heard it before and she still found it funny that a man like Buccaneer, so original in every single thing he did, would have such a normal name.

For a little while, he and the general argued about whether or not Buccaneer could just stay at the fort, the same way Zinnia was now. Needless to say, that hadn’t been a conversation Buccaneer should have entered with complete confidence on coming on top of.

Miles smiled at Zinnia from time to time, listening to the two of them bickering just like she was, but he didn’t talk and she was thankful. She had this… coldness in her chest right now, not because of the actual temperature but from having seen the town. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to have come back.

Once Olivier had shut Buccaneer up for the tenth time, she noticed Zinnia’s face and didn’t take long to figure out something had stirred within her.

She drove her horse to trot closer to her, and Miles caught the hint, falling back side-by-side with Buccaneer.

“What’s with the face?”

“What face?” Zinnia said at once, feigning to be fine. “This is my normal, everyday ‘I’m cold’ face.”

Olivier raised her eyebrow at her, accusingly.

“It’s your ‘something’s wrong’ face. I’ve memorized most of them. I’m unbeatable at remembering them.”

“The _unbeatable_ wall.” Zinnia smirked feebly. “She remembers faces now.”

Olivier made a face, suggesting that of course she did remember them.

Zinnia gave in after a few seconds of Olivier’s gaze penetrating her eyes.

“It’s nothing, I just… I’ve been trapped in that metal wall for a while, I didn’t think I’d remember so strongly what would have been in my life if you hadn’t… you know…”

“Trapped you in that metal wall.”

“Saved my ass from freezing,” Zinnia corrected her. “That’s what you did. Don’t think I don’t know I can still catch a train and leave for warmer lands.”

“Maybe you could. I seem to recall you enjoy warmer temperatures. And I won’t pretend to not be overly fond of you in summer attire.

Zinnia blushed at the implication of Olivier thinking she could give this place up and follow Zinnia wherever she went and of Olivier certainly enjoying her showing more bare skin.

“You’re incorrigible,” she whispered half-angrily. Buccaneer and Miles were suspiciously quiet behind them. Then she cleared her throat and said: “Stop staring at me like I’ve just taken a bullet. I’ll be fine. I happen to _like_ the metal wall.”

Olivier smiled to herself. “Of course you do.”

But she knew how long it had taken Zinnia to even feel a little bit welcome in that world of men and war. She knew that if Zinnia liked it now it was because she could _share_ it, not because it was likable in itself. And there was something wicked about that.

She needed to distract Zinnia from thinking about the future like this, or they would both end up arguing or crying about it like teenagers. She needed to do something that would range from adorable to hateful that would manage to get Zinnia’s mind off of things.

Just how the hell was she supposed to do such a thing? 

* * *

 

The gate klonked behind them as Buccaneer secured it. Miles and his horse walked on towards the stables, but Olivier purposely made sure Zinnia stayed behind. She wanted to talk to her for a moment, before she went upstairs to work on this magnificent new distraction she was going to cook up for Zinnia.

“What?” Zinnia said, frowning, thinking probably that something was going on. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry,” Olivier replied, going for gentle this time. She felt surprisingly alert and jumpy—a bad combination. “I have something important to deal with. Will I see you at dinner?”

Zinnia stared at her, not very sure of what was going on.

“Like you have to ask.” It was their thing, they saw each other at meals, during training, and after dinner. The rest of the time meeting or not depended on chance, or whether Zinnia knew where Olivier was to go see her. Usually, she didn’t. Usually, she contented herself with meals and a bed. It was better than she could have dreamed time ago, anyway.

“I’m asking,” Olivier said, frowning now too. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Zinnia replied at once. “Of course not.” Then, she just shook her head. This didn’t have to turn into an argument; there was nothing to argue about. “Come on, get up there, work. I’ll see you later, okay?”

And she leaned in to kiss Olivier’s lips in a hurry.

“Yeah, later…” But all Olivier saw was that nostalgia in her eyes that threatened to build walls around Zinnia and she felt awful about it. _What can I do to drive that feeling away?_

She dismounted in a leap, boots hitting the ground hard, and pushed the reins of her horse into Buccaneer’s chest.

“Here,” she said when Buccaneer’s face contorted into a shocked expression. “Unsaddle her for me, will you?”

And he muttered a quiet: “Yes, sir.”

Zinnia and Miles shared a look as she stomped away.

“What’s up with her?” Miles asked.

Zinnia shrugged

“She says she’s got something important to do.”

“That’s odd,” Miles said. “I thought it’d all been wrapped up today before we left…”

And Zinnia found it odd as well, but she trusted Olivier. Whatever that important thing was, it wasn’t any of her business, and she should have nothing to worry about.

And she hadn’t, not technically.

Olivier got on the first elevator that was free, and she didn’t look twice at who she’d left behind to make happy in her absence. She almost ran once she was out of it into the library, locking herself inside and taking her full first breath.

She had seen something in Zinnia’s eyes she hadn’t liked. The shadow of grief, the shadow of the present she’d given up now. Something like the life she’d had on Iver would have waited for her in North City, with her neighbors and friends. Although, truth be told, Olivier had never seen Zinnia have _friends,_ not like the ones she’d made in the fort. Perhaps, she thought as well, in the fort she’d had no choice but to eventually make them.

Olivier walked around for a while until she found the book she’d been looking for. It was an old volume, its cover green and worn, and it delved on matters she hadn’t thought about in years. Not that she ever had thought about it herself, but the people around her.

She sat down at one of the dust-covered tables and opened it, passing her fingertips over the title.

_Botany,_ Olivier thought. _Here we are again. Did you miss me?_

She didn’t have the heart to admit that maybe _she_ had.

_“So you’re a…?” she had asked, hands behind her back, as she took the room in. It was the first time she saw it, and she’d never shared a living space with so much green. The plants took over the empty corners and the colors of the flowers in some of them made it all look like an enchanted forest._

_“Botanist?” Ianthe had turned around with a polite smile. She’d been watering a tiny plant she had on her desk, hands careful not to spill a drop of it. “Yeah. I mean, I’m studying to be.”_

_Olivier had made an approving noise. She would have considered college herself if her mother hadn’t thought it a way for her to get a husband._

_“An educated young woman, are we?”_

_“I’m not doing it for the prestige.” Ianthe had said, almost harshly. She hadn’t liked to be compared with those women that, like Olivier’s mother, believed in the power of college only because it would find them a proper spouse. Ianthe hadn’t wanted marriage opportunities, she’d always just wanted to learn, to see past societal constraints and see what nobody else even wanted to. “I just really, really love plants.”_

_“How so?” Olivier had said, looking around. She hadn’t been too sure then just how far this thing would go, and standing there it should have been clearer to her, surrounded by Ianthe’s essence. All those green books and little plants and flowers in the shelves, the desk, the walls. Olivier hadn’t thought it safe—those plants could almost come alive at night to strangle either of them—, but if Ianthe did, she would trust her judgment._

_Olivier had known Ianthe wasn’t afraid of answering her question. Ianthe wasn’t afraid of anything in the world, Olivier had been positive about that. Not of much else, but of that at least. It had been one of her fundamental truths, and one that she hadn’t learned in the academy._

_“They’re that part of life that we pretend to understand,” Ianthe had said, in answer to her question. “We’ve studied them for years, we think we have them down to the letter… But from time to time a new species sprouts that sends scientists ’round the bend. It’s just… the mystery of life, far more than humans are. At least to me.”_

What a different life that had been, spending time with the cute little botanist who breathed fire when angry. Ianthe and Zinnia were so different, Olivier couldn’t even put her finger on just how different they were, and not just concerning plants. Ianthe had devoted her life to studying them, trying to figure out the big secret to them, and she always stopped to smell the flowers, because she’d used to say they were the windows to everyone’s soul. They were like a mirror, they gave you back that which you could not normally see. Zinnia, on the other hand, couldn’t stand them. And if Ianthe had been right, maybe it was precisely _because_ Zinnia wasn’t overly fond of mirrors either.

_No one likes their true reflection._

Olivier allowed herself a tiny smile as she flipped through the pages. She didn’t know why she was sitting there, reading about flowers, but she didn’t want to be anywhere else, not even inside her own memories. Doing this, Zinnia would cheer up. In a way. Olivier getting her flowers would at least separate her feelings and let her focus on anger and questions like ‘why are you like this’. Olivier had to do this, if only just for that tiny moment in which the shadows in Zinnia’s eyes were eclipsed by some warmth.

She was planning on finding some Central flowers, local and typical, but her memory was already screwed over all those years she’d spent in the north. And that was why she was consulting encyclopedias with more dust than the entire room. To find some to bring to Briggs in a bouquet that would probably get thrown to her face.

She couldn’t remember for the life of her if Central was home to Lady's Mantle or the Flamingo Flower or Hyacinths. And the more she consulted those expert pages the less sure she was if there would even _be_ flowers in flower shops this time of year. She had no idea how the business was these days, even if she had an aunt in it. She hadn’t stayed in contact with her for too long to actually remember anything about what she did. Olivier’s only memories concerning her were that she had been the only Armstrong woman before her to refuse her established path and find her own, building it if she had to. She had been a kind but strict woman who hadn’t been around much, but Olivier remembered her not turning down a request or a question, like her own mother had used to. For a while, Mr Armstrong even took to saying that his sister was a spy, conning everyone under the pretense of a woman with a flower shop. Now, Olivier thought it funny. She could use an aunt that knew about flowers.

Out of nowhere, suddenly her eyes zoomed in on a name. The zinnia flower.

Before she dry-laughed, Olivier opened her eyes wide. If Zinnia hadn’t been flower girl up to now, if by any chance in the world that hadn’t been Olivier’s way to think about her, today the nickname would have been born anyway.

It was meant to be, fated. This was _the_ flower Olivier needed to find. What Zinnia would see in it was not something Olivier herself could guess, but anything was better than letting her dwell over a past she’d left behind. She had to stop it, with laughter or wrath, anything would do.

If she could stop it with love, she would try.

And try, she was going to. 

* * *

 

“Austin!” Olivier called.

The gathering of soldiers right outside the kitchen suddenly stood up straighter and gulped in silence.

Austin stepped forward.

“Yes?”

Olivier handed him a slapdash paper folding where she’d written everything he would need to know for the mission she was sending him on. She’d thought him ready for a long time now, he’d surpassed her expectations of a boy fresh out of Central. He was a Central lapdog no more now, he belonged to Briggs, to the north. And to her command.

“Your orders,” she explained as the boy took the paper in his hands and opened it.

_Zinnia elegans_ , she’d written on it, plus a few more details about it being a flower of predominantly pink and fuchsia hues. There were several other species within the genus of the flower, but this had been Olivier’s favorite—because of the colors, in a way unique to this flower, and the way the name had reminded her of Zinnia’s elegance, which wasn’t obvious to the common observer but clear to whoever had watched her stand for what she believed in and loved.

Olivier hadn’t seen anyone deal with someone else’s problems as elegantly as Zinnia did.

“I’m… sorry. Have I understood correctly? You want me … to find a flower?” _A flower that’s named like… you-know-who_ , she knew he would have wanted to add.

“Quite correctly, soldier. The weather is most agreeable this morning, you may ride to North City if you wish. Find a partner to ride with you who will then return the horses there. I expect you to board an early train to Central as soon as possible and return within the week.”

Austin blinked several times. She was giving him a _week_ to find a flower in the city he knew best, but still… this was odd. More than odd, unusual. And he had a feeling this had little to do with his actual job. But if this involved the relationship Captain Buccaneer had tried so hard to spark, then Austin would do his utmost to help out. Perhaps Olivier was planning to ask Zinnia out by bringing her a flower she shared a name with.

“But… how should I look for it? I’ve lived in Central my whole life, and yet I wouldn’t know how to find something this specific.”

Olivier gave him a pointed look he soon took to mean that this was not her problem but his duty to overcome.

“Report to Northern Command. They’ll procure means to get you to Central.”

“Yes, sir,” Austin said. “Thank you, sir.”

“Good luck,” Olivier said before her long mane of blonde hair got lost in the crowd pooling around the kitchen.

Austin couldn’t help but stare at the piece of paper she’d given him.

A flower. He was being sent south, back home, for a flower.

Odd and unusual, and… in a way _different_ from what Olivier ordered people to do. She hardly ever sent newbies on missions, maybe he’d finally proven useful to her.

One of his mates patted him in the back.

“Man, you get to try the wonderful Central Command accommodations. Way warmer than Briggs’ bunks. I wish I was you.”

But Austin was pretty sure that the first thing he’d do back in his city wouldn’t be to find a room in Central Command but get back to his own room at his parents’ place. He was going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started Chapter 60 just yesterday and I can't believe how far the story has come since this chapter. There's so many things to enjoy now, and so many more to come. And this chapter has so much soft banter, I'd totally forgotten ^^


	36. Cogitavit bellum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of action again!

He twiddled his hands, sitting in an office he’d only ever stood in before. This was new to him, and not in an exciting way, but rather in a potentially dangerous one. Olivier wasn’t keen on calling people to her office to just talk, she either brought people up there to give them bad news or she never did. Austin was not brave enough to have high hopes, not in the slightest.

He had just returned from Central, quite early in the morning, eyelids heavy and his brain slightly foggy. He’d had to get up before the sun to fetch a fresh flower for the woman who now sat across him. He kept glancing at the few specimens he’d bought, then down at his hands, hoping that Olivier had found the state of the flowers well- preserved enough.

Sitting there, he began to wonder if maybe this wasn’t bigger than just a flower, if she was about to interrogate him about something else. She had sent him into enemy land, after all. Central was to Briggs what Briggs was to Central, a hostile land of savages that, despite being military as well, could not be trusted, not entirely.

But, as it turned out when she opened her mouth to speak, he hadn’t been appointed as a temporary mole, after all:

“This is it…” she said, judgmental.

She had never seen the flowers before, she had had no idea what they looked like in the flesh, pictures did them so little justice. But, truth be told, perhaps Olivier had been expecting something more impressive.

“It’s… I mean, I acquired it right before getting on the train. It’s… almost fresh,” Austin said, trying to sound convincing, and above all, confident. She liked her soldiers to mirror her innate confidence, but Austin was of the opinion that she often forgot they weren’t all like her. She made them who they were, because of who she was; they didn’t come to the north as part of the inner workings of Briggs. “But by the looks of it, it probably won’t last long. Might want to… um… put them on a vase.”

“It’ll take that into account,” Olivier said impassively. She needn’t have summoned him there for this, she could tell there was something dark and scary going on through the boy’s mind, and her intent today wasn’t to torture him. He’d learned plenty of lessons by her unkind hand. Olivier even managed a quick smile, tense and small. “You may leave.”

“If you require nothing else…” Austin said as he left his chair.

“Actually, yes,” Olivier said. “Fetch Miles. Tell him to cancel my patrol tonight.”

The flowers were here, and she would see to them surviving the day, but tonight was the night. Her own Zinnia flower, lost in memories of past seasons and the uncertainty of new seasons to come, would benefit greatly from this little touch of humor Olivier had dug out of herself.

“You’re still… doing patrol?” Austin asked stupidly.

It took one look from Olivier for the boy to shake his head and realize his mistake. He was asking the least appropriate questions.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll be right out. Thank you for your time.”

He turned around to leave again, fairly less confident than before.

“And… Austin?” Olivier’s voice called him back.

“Yes?” he said, voice shaking a little, turning to meet her icy blue eyes.

“You’ve done well,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re… you’re welcome!”

“Now go.”

And she noticed he had this face, like he was holding something back, something important to some extent. But she had no idea what it could be, clearly nothing he thought she should know or he would have reported to her already.

Olivier decided to trust her head, not her gut, and dismiss it. 

* * *

 

Austin went straight to the lounge room for a coffee. He took one glance at the schedules for the day and cursed his bad luck. He had night shift tonight, he would need the caffeine.

It had been a long enough trip back to the north, after just a couple of days, that he could have slept in the train, but he’d been wide awake then, just looking at the flowers he was carrying and wondering what the hell was going on that Olivier needed them for. It clearly wasn’t for anything official, it couldn’t be, but… romantic-wise, what could it mean?

He’d soon forgotten about flowers as soon as he’d arrived to Central a few days back, he still felt uneasy from it. His sleeping quarters had been at the heart of the Amestrian military, and what he’d seen had far from reminded him of home.

“Hey,” a fellow soldier greeted him when he walked towards the coffee machine, the door slamming shut behind him. “Back already?”

“Back already,” Austin replied as he yawned, slowly preparing his coffee. With milk and sugar, always.

“Yeah, how was mommy and daddy, eh, Austin?” some more guys pitched in. Austin ignored them as he poured the milk.

“Lots of people this time of year?” Smith asked. “I hear winters are lovely down south. Snows are even a big deal.”

“Yeah,” Austin said, sitting down at a table with the few men who were on their breaks. “There was hardly any. Snow, I mean. There were plenty of people. I suppose that’s just what Central is like.”

But now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen as many people as there should be in late fall. It attracted tourist population from all over the country and even a few visitors from foreign countries, and yet this year there had barely been any tourist activity Austin had been aware of.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, lost in thought. “It all felt… weird.”

“It’s Central, it’s meant to be,” Smith replied, laughing. He’d been born up north, he wouldn’t know, Austin thought.

“No, I mean…” Austin said. “There was an odd feeling about everything. Something was not right. The command center was crawling with people, and yet… they didn’t seem to be doing anything other than gather, and not to talk about the war itself but something that these wars are hiding.”

“No way,” someone said. “You uncovered a plot all on your own? Little Austin did us a great service!”

“Shut up,” Austin said, blushing very red. “I didn’t uncover anything. I just think it’s weird, that’s all. I’ve lived there my whole life, spent a few years in Central Command… It’s the first time I see something like that.”

Smith leaned back on his chair, stroking his chin.

“Maybe the kid’s got a point and there’s something fishy going on.” 

* * *

 

Olivier getting out of her office at this hour was not news lately. She snuck out, it was common knowledge, whether to do routine checks on everyone on her floor or—as no one knew—to see what Zinnia was doing, even from a distance or just for a second and a quick hi. It made her feel like they were actually an item that way, it reminded her that, against all odds, they _were._ As if most things now wouldn’t remind her of it as well. But strolling around felt like more efficient work.

She saw her behind a semi-closed door, hunched over Buccaneer’s maps, probably finishing up on the details of the route Olivier had already almost approved. Zinnia’s hair was now long enough that it got in her eyes and she had to constantly brush it away as she worked. Olivier had to look away before her stomach fluttered, growing wings out of nowhere and then slamming her against the ground.

She went down to the lounge for a quick drink to get her brain back on track and maybe finish up early today, so she could go fetch Zinnia for their training and spend a little while longer at it.

_She’s turned my brain into mush,_ Olivier thought reluctantly.

And she said to herself, in response to that: _your brain has always been mush, Armstrong. You’ve just been excellent at hiding that._

And she had never had the chance before to allow herself to show just how bad that mush could spread in her. She liked being the small spoon and it frustrated her, because at her height it would be mutually beneficing to be the big spoon.

A coffee, at this point, would get her mind going so fast she’d fly past those kinds of thoughts.

She was about to push her way into the room when she listened to it.

“They are up to something, I can tell. Nobody does what they’re doing and just… hope to get nothing out of it. We should get on it soon.”

Her entire soul fell all the way to her feet, and she didn’t dare move to pick it up. Were they… _talking_ about her and Zinnia? Could it be that Austin, the little bastard, had gone on and told everyone that there was very juicy flower business going on that may interest them all.

But ‘we should get on it soon’ just sounded ominous to her. She’d thought she’d explicitly forbidden Buccaneer’s clique to get involved again. There was nothing to get involved in now, it all was done, they all had permission to stay behind and watch if they pleased, but nothing else. Never anything else.

Now more people were in on it. And if more people knew, this was already out of her control, if it ever had truly been. She and Zinnia were just another big rumor crawling up the walls of the wall. They were entertainment, like books had once been to her, like writing was to Zinnia. A way to channel everything that went unsaid and undone, and Olivier’s downfall.

She turned around at once, without stopping to listen for what Austin was saying next. If she had, maybe she would have found out sooner that he was only talking about what he’d picked up on at Central. But she hadn’t stayed to hear that; right now she just needed to tell the other woman these rumors would eventually reach them all.

This could not be allowed to get much further if now more people knew. And if she couldn’t stop it, at least she could be the first to climb on a tank and just announce it for the whole fort to hear, that indeed she was in a relationship and that it was none of their business why or how or what it meant for them. She was simply not brave enough for that, not even to just accept it was out. Olivier would fight till the end.

And fighting maybe meant cornering Austin before this got too far out of reach.

She quickly went to grab Zinnia for an early training session. Buccaneer didn’t even blink, surprisingly, when he saw her walk into the room with all the confidence in the world (all feigned at this point and a souvenir of so many years of feigning it), instead of waiting outside.

Zinnia immediately noticed it, as if she’d learned truly how Olivier’s real confident stance looked like. She was slowly learning the fine details of loving her.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Olivier looked around and shook her head.

“Nothing’s wrong, but…” she said. “I’d prefer we took it upstairs.

And upstairs meant the gymnasium.

“Sit down,” she said as soon as the door was closed behind them.

Zinnia frowned. “You’re really going to ask me to sit down? What is it? Are you pregnant? Is it mine?”

Olivier just glared. She didn’t feel capable of anything else.

She told Zinnia briefly, then. About the little knot in her throat that threatened to shout treason at whoever was spreading truths about them as if they were anybody else. But they weren’t, she had never been, and she didn’t plan on being now. Now less than ever.

Yet Zinnia didn’t experience this the same way, she had nothing to fear, no reputation to uphold because hers was ever-changing, dependent on the day and the weather and how moody she was. Olivier had been moody externally for fifteen years, she had a name to stay true to and people to protect, but she should also be protecting what was hers and hers only, not boasting of it for the world to hear. The world didn’t care and she was not about to try and convince it to.

And when Olivier was done, it was made even clearer that they had opposite ways of processing all of this.

“Listen, I understand it’s different for you… but we’re not _hiding._ There’s nothing to hide.”

“Do you want to be the ‘mysterious young woman’ who has thawed the wall of ice up north?” Olivier said, biting, not realizing that this was what Zinnia had already become, a mystery who had charmed the uncharmable. “The tabloids are not kind.”

“Nobody knows me.  It’s not like I care what they might say, _you_ do.”

Olivier ignored that and continued:

“You’ll be a target for the press—”

“And a spot on your _flaw_ less career,” Zinnia insisted. “I know. Trust me, if this was out already, we’d be aware of it. Buccaneer isn’t the only one here with undying enthusiasm.”

“I hope you are right.”

Zinnia observed her quietly. She had begun pacing back and forth, unsure where to step and unsure where to stop, hair moving around her. Zinnia still thought she should have kept on braiding it, if only to keep it out of her way.

She put a hand around Olivier’s wrist to make her stop chewing the inside of her cheeks from fretting.

“If you’re so worried,” Zinnia said, “just talk to him about this. Miles and Buccaneer already know, where’s the harm in letting someone else keep the… secret?”

The way she said ‘secret’ upset Olivier. It wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t dirty or offensive or anything she wanted hidden out of shame. It was simply something that, once out, would never be able to stay between the two of them. And there had already been a few breakouts of excitement between the men, enough to have proven to Olivier that she did well in being scared of people knowing.

This would be a first, and it would not help with Briggs’ reputation. The things the newspapers would say, the things the _military_ would say… If it had been just something Olivier had done, like killing someone or being especially cold, then she would have taken it proudly and worn every rude headline like a crown. But now those headlines would be exposing Zinnia as well, and Olivier would never allow that.

“The _harm_ ,” Olivier counterattacked, _“_ is that I don’t trust him with that information and that I have no idea what he could do with it.”

“Austin isn’t that bad,” Zinnia said. “He’s a good kid. And he respects you. If you tell him to quit it, he will.”

“Yeah, and maybe I will have to. They’re so _serious_ about it when they talk, as if this were…”

“What?” Zinnia pressed it. She could tell there was something else underneath all that.

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

“No. Tell me. As if this were what?”

Olivier finally gave up and, sitting down, she said it: “As if this were to have an impact on their lives.”

“In a way, it has,” Zinnia pointed out. “I never belonged here, and you offered me commodities they don’t enjoy.”

“You’re a _guest_ here, don’t forget that. They’re working. You shouldn’t be doing half the things you are, you’re not part of the workforce here. I should be treating you the same way I would treat any other civilian guest.”

Zinnia put a finger under Olivier’s chin to tilt her head up. Not that she needed to because it was pretty far up already.

“It has an impact on their lives, and that’s fine. I know my place and I know this won’t be it until…”

Now it was Zinnia’s turn to trail off.

“Until…?”

“Until it goes public, until they know this isn’t a game and you’re—okay, it sounds terrible anyway, you giving me special treatment because I’m your… date,” she murmured the last word.

“That’s not making me feel any better.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Zinnia said gently, sitting on Olivier’s lap. “This is what things are like. Take it or leave it. I know you’re the kind of woman to make the harshest choices.”

“Not in this.”

“They’re not like that,” Zinnia said. “Talk to Austin and you’ll see. They might not even have been talking about us, hasn’t that occurred to the mind that defeated the Drachman once and is planning to do it again, huh?”

Olivier chuckled dryly. “They _were_ talking about us. There’s nothing else to talk about for miles.”

“You and I heard how a dude asked another dude out in the shower. They could be focusing on _that_.”

Olivier rolled her eyes. The memory became fresh in her mind, and not precisely the one about the two men gossiping about it. Zinnia had been about to run away, a thought that now turned almost funny in her mind. How could Zinnia, the heart of this place, ever have been thinking about leaving? In Olivier’s mind, it was an incongruence, a paradox that nothing would solve.

Before this one woman had shown up in her life, Briggs hadn’t been the perfect place by far, although it had had its finer points, but then Zinnia had come in, half-frozen to death and lost somewhere Olivier couldn’t reach, and warmth had turned softer, the cold more and more appealing, every lunch another opportunity, and every waking moment a chance to risk what Olivier hadn’t risked in too long and had, inevitably, ended up risking.

“You _do_ belong here,” Olivier grumbled all of a sudden, having lost already. She would just have to talk to Austin, instill some sense into his young head before Buccaneer got through to him, which she was sure he might already have done. “To me, you do.”

Zinnia just looked at her, not daring to contradict her just yet as directly as she would have liked to.

“But I’m not like _you_ ,” she said instead. _“_ And that shows, and denying it won’t help anyone deal with this any better.”

“We’re not discussing _you_ fitting in or not here. This is a matter of going public.”

“It’s because I don’t _fit in_ that this is a big deal, don’t you see?” Zinnia said softly, as if teaching something to a kid. “If I was one of you, you wouldn’t be needing to make a public announcement in order to feel like you’re avoiding something worse.”

Olivier shut up, the only thing that she could do, because the flower girl was right.

“If I was one of you,” Zinnia continued, “none of this would be a big deal. And you wouldn’t care less about what the _tabloids_ said regarding ‘that mysterious young man with strong back muscles and a killer smile that has thawed the ice wall’, because that young man would already be living in your world, impervious to the tabloids and their bad press.”

Olivier did now look at her matter-of-factly.

“You do know I’m a lesbian, don’t you?”

Zinnia rolled her eyes.

“It’s just an example!”

“Well, it’s a terrible one.”

Zinnia sighed.

“Look, I’m okay with people knowing, and part of me already needs them to know because I hate hiding like I’m doing something wrong. I had enough of that before,” she muttered that last sentence. “If you want to keep it this way a bit longer, fine. Just, please, stop being so paranoid and get your hands on some facts before you accuse anybody of robbing you—” Olivier glared softly. “—okay, fine: us. Of robbing _us of_ our privacy, okay?”

“M’kay…”

That single request to be pragmatic was the reason why Olivier tried not to listen to the murmurs of the people around her all day and night and instead took a few hours to make the decision to call Austin to her office and just _calmly—_ as if Zinnia, the voice of reason, was sitting next to her judging—discuss this matter with him.

It wouldn’t stop what had already happened, but it would prevent Austin from telling the entire fort about what he’d been sent to Central to do. And Olivier desperately needed that to stay a private affair for a little while longer, until she figured out how to be a normal woman with a normal life, even if that life took place in a warzone.

She chose a sunny morning so that the fear wouldn’t seep into him from the first second she caught sight of him and told him to follow her all the way to the office. She knew he still had trouble being confident and tried not to be too serious about it, walking side-by-side with him instead of dashing across the corridors without waiting for him to catch up. She even held the door open for him once they were on the right floor and didn’t allow herself to watch him, trying to instill some sense of insecurity in him, because that sense was already there and all she had to do was act normal.

And her normal, per se, was already pretty intimidating.

She sat down slowly.

“Austin. Take a seat,” she said. Olivier didn’t dare use her angry voice on him now. This was too personal and she was already on thin ice if he knew more than he was letting on.

But her icy tone caught him up to what was going on, if he hadn’t known for sure before. It was clear she wanted something, and that it would entail no praise, but quite the contrary.

Austin took a deep breath to calm himself down, counting backwards from thirty to lose himself in the numbers and not her serious expression.

“I didn’t summon you here for chitchat,” she said once she noticed he was slightly less shaky, “as you may have already guessed.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“I’ve… _noticed—_ ” She picked that word carefully, avoiding much narrower options that would made him wish he had never come to Briggs “—that things seem a little heated since you’ve been back. Anything to comment on the matter?”

“I, uh… I wasn’t sure if I should say something.”

“I’m asking you to now.” _Politely_ , she thought to herself. She just tightened her fists together and kept going. “Because I am the one who calls the shots around here, and that kind of power is not to be… forgotten about, am I clear?”

If she hadn’t been, her eyebrows, still arched on her face, certainly were.

“Well, I… There’s not a nice way to say it,” Austin stuttered.

Olivier was sitting on the edge of her chair, hoping for sweet confirmation so she could finally act, and then come back to her room at night and present Zinnia with the evidence.

_See? They were all up to something. Be a little glad I stopped it in time,_ she would say as Zinnia rolled her eyes at how silly it was. And she would be right to, but Olivier needed this. Controlling the image other people had of her was an impossibility she felt she still needed to at least try to reach for.

But when Austin opened his dry mouth again to speak, all her presuppositions fell to the floor.

“Things are strange at Central, more than I remembered.”

_What?_ she thought immediately. He hadn’t been spreading gossip?

_Damn it, Zinnia was right._ And there was nothing more embarrassing than to admit defeat to a partner who was so intent on convincing you they were right in the first place and just trying to guide you towards the right path. But Olivier had heard Austin’s words as well as what they did _not_ mean, and she couldn’t just ignore them.

Central wasn’t precisely the epitome of harmony and divine society, but calling it strange was a stretch, especially if that categorization came from a boy who up until a few months back had been living there.

Olivier leaned towards him a little. So it had nothing to do with the flowers… Then what was all the fuss about? Could it be she’d misinterpreted the men’s serious faces all long?

“In what way are they ‘strange’?” she asked.

“In every way possible. I can’t—I can’t explain it. But it… made me feel uneasy.” Austin shook his head. “It’s just a feeling, it’s nothing important.”

“No,” Olivier said, and he was shocked at the firmness of it, without it being cruelly so. “It might be important. Keep going.”

He licked his lips, looking for a proper way to phrase it without being confusing.

“It felt as if something was brewing,” he said. “All the highest ranks were there. That’s… that’s odd, isn’t it?” His eyes met hers, waiting for her to dismiss it and say that it really wasn’t. Someone had to convene and fix the problems of the society they had created, after all.

“Not necessarily,” Olivier said, easing his mind a little. “Sometimes there are gatherings.” She was hardly invited to any of them, but she knew that whenever something important came up, the high ranks had these meetings to discuss them. If they thought it appropriate, they would send a letter up north for her to read.

“It gave me that impression.” Austin nodded. “That they were gathered, somehow, for something important. And the Führer…” he added, suddenly recalling something else. “He was away. And I also learned a new alchemist has been recruited on his command. Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist. He’s the youngest yet, a boy of not yet fifteen.” He made sure to quickly add, to play it down a little: “It could have been nothing but… it’s too many things at once, I suppose.”

“What?”

All Olivier knew from how the military recruited new state alchemist came from the days in which her brother had been studying for the exam, and she couldn’t hide her surprise at finding out that a _boy_ had managed to pass it. Alex himself had had to join the force long before he had earned the title of state alchemist.

“Yes,” Austin confirmed. “And… Mustang, from Eastern Command? He’s been summoned there. I saw him with one of his subordinates.”

“How do you know Colonel Mustang?” Olivier asked without preamble.

“Central has always had an eye on him. My superiors spoke of him often,” Austin said as if it were no big deal, realizing in doing so that it might just be.

Olivier sat back on her chair and stroked her chin.

“Did they, now?” she said. “Did you talk to any of your old superiors? Did they say anything that might prove your claims, Austin?”

Austin had to think about it. He already thought that the fact that all of those things were happening and were happening _now_ said something about the state of affairs, but he wasn’t sure how much, and he was glad he’d been summoned to speak of it before it got too big for the men to handle. “They said something about… the wars. We’re at war with Aerugo and Creta as well, sir,” he added, hoping it would be the last piece of the puzzle for her to figure out.

“I’m well aware, yes.”

She wasn’t up to date on how those two wars were faring; she had her own to worry about.

“They spoke of it as a ‘plan’,” Austin continued. “I didn’t understand what they were making reference to.”

Olivier even smiled, sad.

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to.”

His face relaxed. “So all of this makes sense to you?”

“Yes,” she lied, because she felt she had no other choice. If this reached the whole of Briggs, worry would spread like wildfire, and she would have to deal with it the olden way, by force.

What Austin had told her was odd, very odd. Wars were never _planned,_ not this way. Amestris was facing three fronts and could not sustain more than two, something had to be going on, there had to be some plot the government hadn’t shared with her.

“Yes, it is all alright, soldier,” she said. “Rest easy, the world won’t crumble on all of our heads. Besides, you’re in the north now. The rules are different here.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you for receiving me.”

And he then left, and Olivier just sat there, unable to figure out what the hell was going on, but knowing now that something _was_ going on if all of these factors had coincided. No one would have brought Mustang to Central without having a reason to. No one would have spoken of the current wars as a ‘plan’, or she would have known of said plan.

This couldn’t come at a worse time for her, she had her own battle plans to mind.

Whatever was happening, though, she had to keep her soldiers’ minds away from it—and her own as well. They needed to focus on the north, southern affairs belonged to southern politicians, not to them.

Later that day, she talked to Zinnia about her being right, because Austin hadn’t been giving away details of his trip south, and Olivier had not mentioned any of her suspicions that something was happening, big enough that it was being kept a secret in light of the wrong people finding out. She saw no need to worry her, or anyone else.

That was why, before they went to dinner she gathered them all in one of the amplest rooms of the fort. Men sprouted out of everywhere, both in the lower levels and up on the floors surrounding this one, all looking to her, midway across the stairs.

She had decided that the wisest thing to do was drive their minds away from trouble into the one and only risk they ran here at Briggs: their neighboring country. Anything else shouldn’t be up to them to worry about, and she wasn’t about to let them.

She had come prepared with a new shiny thing to show them.

When she began speaking, the room quietened, and her voice carried:

“Listen up, men,” she said. “It’s come to my knowledge that you seem to be worried about things back at Central. It wouldn’t be the first time our _friends_ in the south give us reason to, and it won’t be the last.” She chuckled softly. “Rest assured of that. But this—this is not the south. Whatever it is that they’re doing, they will handle it. We have much bigger fish to fry, and we will fry them.” She raised her voice a little more for emphasis. “Starting now, a new Mountain Men route will be established. It will cover more ground and allow for a faster retreat, if necessary. Preparations are being carried this very moment for it, and, consequently, some of your names will be drawn these next few days to join the first batch that gets to inaugurate it, so be ready if you are called.”

When silence came, the mutters started, and she began walking down the stairs, losing herself in the crowd looking for Miles.

She saw confused faces, probably because they had been expecting her to comment more on the problems at Central, but she decided to ignore them. Eventually, they would forget. Gossip didn’t usually last very long around the fort, just until the next big thing happened.

She cursed in her own mind. _She_ was the current big thing, then, if this wasn’t to take shape in their minds. Was she ready to uphold that title for however long it was necessary to keep them off of public matters at Central?

_Perhaps I will just have to make the sacrifice,_ Olivier thought, finally having localized the major in the crowd. He was walking towards Buccaneer, who had heard the news in a corner of the room and was laughing with a group of people. She hoped to catch Miles before he got there too, so she walked faster.

Reaching out, she grabbed his coat’s sleeve to call his attention.

“Major,” she said. “A moment, please.”

Since he did the organization of the schedule, she would need him in order to choose who got to join this upcoming first expedition. Miles was the best at this sort of task, knowing his fellow soldiers well enough to know who would be optimal for what Olivier expected of it.

He stopped to face her, his face calm and patient although he was on a break at the moment. She liked that about him, that even if it could refuse to pay attention, he still did, because he liked what his duty was.

“Of course,” he said.

Slowly, she led him to a quiet corner as everyone headed in the opposite direction, to dinner or the great stairs that led to wherever they were supposed to be.

For a brief second, Miles couldn’t help but entertain the idea that perhaps she was about to confide something private and intimate that nobody else was fit for hearing, as it once had almost been.

But the illusion shattered when she crossed her arm, leaning on a wall, and said:

“I’ll need you to choose twenty men for the first expedition of the Flower Route.”

“The… Flower Route,” he repeated, confused.

Olivier merely stared at him, almost defying him to say something about the obvious reference.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m counting on you to select a few men. You know the usual requirements.”

“Will it be simultaneous with the other MM batch?” he asked.

“Not necessarily, but it wouldn’t hurt if it were,” Olivier said.  “The more men we have out there, the better.”

And she was right, but they didn’t dispose of that many men to have three batches at the same time. Two would cost them dearly, too.

“We haven’t found anything yet, there’s probably nothing to find.”

“I’m not taking any chances, Miles. I intend to win this war.” She stood upright again. “Find me those men.”

They were orders, after all, and Miles took them like he had for years now. It was easy, really. Olivier gave him a command and he followed it to the end of the line, as it should be. His loyalty was unwavering, and he didn’t need her to acknowledge her to continue betting on it before he bet on anything else. He trusted her judgment and left without another word.

Olivier sighed when she was finally alone, the men having slithered away already. She was doing everything wrong, but she had no idea how to do it right, so this would have to do for now. If she thought about all that escaped her, she would buy a ticket on the earliest train next morning and make sure she saw what Austin had with her two own eyes. Never again would she trust another person’s word unless she had seen it for herself.

She skipped dinner that night, her stomach had closed itself up, locked her away, and she didn’t think she would end up eating much anyway, so she went back to her office, deserted now, and removed a bottle of liquor from one of the hidden drawers of her desk.

Olivier needed it today. Not to forget, but to cope.

She had barely finished her first glass when there was a rap on the door.

She sat up straighter, not bothering to hide the bottle again. People already knew she wasn’t exactly contrary to alcohol, especially late at night when the bulk of her work had been done already.

“Come in,” she said.

She had been expecting someone with more questions about the route or Central, but instead the face who popped up behind the door was Zinnia’s, and Olivier’s heart softened. It might have even forgotten about the wars, if Zinnia herself hadn’t brought them inside, shining in her eyes like fire in the night.

“Didn’t see you at dinner,” Zinnia said, closing the door behind her.

“Paperwork,” Olivier said, but she immediately realized that it wasn’t a good excuse; her desk was bare. She wondered how much she would be able to conceal now that it was one-on-one and things were so recent.

Zinnia didn’t comment on the obvious lie. Instead, she walked closer and sat down on Olivier’s lap, putting an arm around her shoulder.

“That was a good speech,” she said, toying a little with one of Olivier’s stray locks of hair and braiding it. She hadn’t learned how to produce a decent braid, but the weaving part of it calmed her down. She could understand why Buccaneer had a butt-long thin braid and the positives effects it had on his moods, if this worked for him the same way that it did for her.

“It was rubbish and you know it.”

“You’re really not worried about it?”

“I’ve no reason to think something’s wrong. And it’s none of my business if it is. We guard the north,” Olivier added, simply. She put both her arms around Zinnia’s body, but it wasn’t rushed or tense, just a way to feel her closer.

Zinnia took a deep breath, trying to be patient. Sometimes talking to Olivier was like talking to the little children that had used to clot Zinnia’s street back at Central.

“So you don’t want to trust Austin, that’s it.”

“He’s a child, he’s not been in this long enough to know. Sometimes we pull strings others think are knives.”

“You could trust _me,_ ” Zinnia said. “And I think he sounded pretty concerned, judging by what you told me. And the rest of them, too. Enough to make you think something was going on and that they knew.”

“They don’t. I prefer them not to,” Olivier said, stubbornly.

“It wouldn’t hurt to come clean,” Zinnia said. Then, she frowned. “About _everything._ ”

Ah, so Zinnia was talking about _this_ going on, not something far away from there, outside of their control. Or, at least, not just about distant planned wars.

“We’re not doing that now. That’s the last thing I need.”

At that, Zinnia snapped. Since when was this one-sided enough that her own side didn’t matter as much?

“I’m not looking forward to being your side bitch until I’m old and grey,” she just said. _If you still want me by then._

Deep down she knew it was impossible to hide her disappointment that Olivier thought she would be content to just be an extramarital affair—if Olivier ever married anything, she would marry her job—all her life. But still Zinnia tried to sound nonchalant and unbothered.

Why wasn’t this as important to Olivier? Was it just because she was scared of the political backlash? Would she be thrown of her throne made of swords and blood if people found out she was seeing someone, as some humans liked to do?

Olivier, though, replied calmly.

“You’re not my anything. You’re you, and I’m me. We simply find ourselves in these shared circumstances.”

“I’m not your side bitch,” Zinnia repeated. “I don’t know what the hell you soldiers have on that front, but I’m not _it_.” She sighed. “I want them to know one day. One day I’ll grow tired of playing around.”

“You’re not my side bitch,” Olivier said. “I hope this proves it.”

And she leaned down, even with Zinnia on her lap, to get the flowers from beneath the table where she’d been keeping it since morning. Olivier didn’t dare look for signs of wear on the petals, she just put the flowers on the table and glanced up at Zinnia, waiting for her reaction.

Now, more than ever, she hoped it would act as distraction.

“I’m told there’s fields of them in the spring and summer. The sunlight makes their colors less intense. Must be a beautiful spectacle to witness,” she said. “But… I don’t need an entire field of them, nor the sun, to witness beautiful. I only need you.”

Poetic, but rather dull, considered she had just admitted, against Zinnia’s wishes, to wanting this to remain a secret for a bit longer.

Of course, she was forgetting that if Zinnia meant to keep on with the conversation, they would just continue with it. In the end, nothing Olivier did had the power to change the topic, but Zinnia stared at her for a few seconds and gave up.

There would be plenty of time to discuss what they hell they were going to do when none of them would turn it into a fight. Neither wanted, really, to turn it into a fight.

And thus the distracting power of the flowers worked on both of them.

“They’re zinnia flowers…” Zinnia muttered, picking one flower up in her hands, fingertips brushing the fuchsia petals.

“They are.” _I thought it might distract you from everything._

And she had been right to.

“You got _me_ me,” Zinnia said, laughing when she realized the pun. She didn’t, for once, remember her aversion toward flowers and having been named after this very one. _Zinnia elegance,_ to her, had always been a cruel joke her parents had thrust upon her without warning nor question. “This is… this is stunning. Thank you.”

“You weren’t supposed to be this happy about it.” Olivier admitted.

Zinnia turned on top of Olivier to glare at her sweetly. “Oh, so you did it to piss me off?”

“Absolutely.”

Zinnia softened. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, I love it. I definitely love it. This might just be the one flower I don’t hate.”

_If you ever hated yourself,_ Olivier thought, _I’d be right by your side trying to show you how to love yourself again._

“It’ll die in the cold...” she said instead. Cold, ever so cold, as the weather that might murder this one flower and slowly blow out the flame inside Zinnia’s heart. Cold, ever so cold, because she had never been shown how to be anything else. Even in softness, her heart was made of ice, and its core would always be, no matter if the rest of it ended up thawing.

“I don’t care,” Zinnia muttered. “I’ll press-dry it. I want to have it forever.”

_I want to have you forever,_ Olivier thought in reply.

And all of this almost had the power, the inner magic, to make her forget there were now several secrets in her life she had no way of truly controlling, because they slithered away from her fingers onto the battlefields where she fought, and they didn’t decide her fate, even if they did challenge her to come conquer it.


	37. We all had homes somewhere

Buccaneer wouldn’t leave Miles alone ever since it was official that Miles had to organize who went on the Flower Route first batch. He had been after an opportunity like this longer than he could remember, and every time he’d been turned down for the job on account of his age, and more possibly his impulsiveness on the field.

Today, again, they sat at the lounge and Buccaneer was invading Miles’s personal space.

“But explain to me why I can’t.”

“You don’t need to have it explained to you!” Miles complained.

“Yes, I do. I don’t understand why you’re saying no.”

“Because you lead your department and that’s it.” Miles told him to see if that helped get him off his back. It was impossible to change Buccaneer’s mind once it had set on something he wanted, and Miles didn’t even know why he was still trying, only that he had to keep at it until it magically worked.

It never did. Buccaneer always had an answer ready.

“Let me lead something else, then.”

Miles stopped nursing his coffee and pretending he didn’t care. He’d gotten fed up. “It’s not up to me, Buccaneer. You know that. Now shut up and let me do my job.”

These days he carried his work everywhere on the fort, even on breaks. Choosing candidates seemed like an easy job until he realized there were hundreds of men in the fort whose profiles he’d need to study with this particular mission in mind.

“It’s not up to you now?” Buccaneer said, rubbing salt on the wound. “I thought you’d been appointed chairman of choosing people for the new route. A route proposed by _my_ department.”

“Exactly,” Miles replied. “Your job there is done. You’ve performed admirably and what you have might—” Not that he did believe it. “—help. But your job now is to make sure our batches have everything ready. We need you behind the scenes, not first line in the snow.” He managed a sad smile to soften the blow of his words. Buccaneer saw right through it; he slammed his cup of coffee on the table.

“Don’t give me the puppy eyes, Miles. It was worth a try, anyway.”

“ _She_ calls the shots. If you really want this, just ask her again. Eventually you will wear her down,” Miles joked. “Like you wear us all down.”

It was his superpower, to get what he wanted how he wanted and convince people they had given it to him of their own free will.

“It’s not about wearing anyone down,” Buccaneer grumbled now. “She’s made it clear enough she won’t put me there. I was hoping that she trusted you enough to not look at the list you gave her.”

Miles couldn’t help but smirk at that thought. As if…

“She would have to be very distracted in order not to double-check.”

“Oh, I believe she is,” Buccaneer said, cracking his knuckles. “There has been flirtatious waiting for Zinnia outside of my department door.” Waiting very subtly by the door, foot on the wall, and looking up ahead like Olivier wasn’t doing something obvious that Buccaneer would thrive on for days. “That can only mean one thing.”

Miles smiled fondly. So much time chasing this one truth, weaving the threads to make it become a reality, and now they could stop running after it at last.

He sighed and drank his coffee.

“It’s working,” he said. “It worked.”

“I was right.” Buccaneer boasted of it, as if he hadn’t always been, as if he hadn’t always seen right through Olivier’s moods and those pieces of paper scattered across her desk. He had seen it before anyone else ever had, and this merit belonged to him and him only. Miles was happy as a bystander.

“It hurts me to say this,” Miles said, laughing. “But… you made it work, yes.”

Buccaneer laughed as well and patted his shoulder with thunderous force.

“Now,” Miles said, serious again. “You made her happy, are you going to let her make _you_ happy now?”

Buccaneer turned his head to the side. He wasn’t sure how to answer that. She certainly wasn’t trying to make him _happy,_ of all things she could be making him.

Miles shook his head and sighed.

“The house,” he clarified. “Are you going to rent that house we saw in Iver?”

“Obviously not.”

“Well, you need a home somewhere, and somewhere to start.”

Buccaneer shook his head. He wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wouldn’t be accepting defeat so soon when he still had full months to prepare. Where he would end up mattered so little compared to what he still had, the people he could still share his life with.

“I don’t need a parent to choose a house for me, Miles. I can choose myself. I will find something.”

Something close enough, something dry and small, something where he could live alone without drowning to the silence. For decades he had shared this fort with a community, asking him to leave it all for good to live in perpetual silence felt like torture to him. He was not used to the lack of noise, he would perish in boredom if left alone too long in the snow, just hearing the wind move and the trees rustle. He wanted the chaos this fort breathed out as if it were oxygen.

“I’m just saying… its November already. Time is eventually going to run out, and then what? She will kick you out, you know that. She will have to and she won’t hesitate.” Miles sighed. “I know her well enough to know she won’t take mercy on us when the time comes.”

Buccaneer raised his eyebrow, questioningly.

“Us?”

Miles looked down at the few inches of coffee he had left.

“Yeah, it’s not just you,” he said. “That woman will see us all leave Briggs, I’m sure of it.” He looked Buccaneer in the eye now. “So… please, if only to make it easier on all of us, go along with it, huh? Iver is fine, but I’m sure if you ask she’ll let you build your own home a few miles off town. Just… pick something, move it along, yeah?”

And he patted Buccaneer’s arm, his eyes suddenly sad. Lately he had forgotten his closest friend in this place was soon to leave the fort’s numbers to live a quiet simple life. The irony of Buccaneer being sent to live that kind of life struck Miles as absurd, but necessary. Eventually, the day would come each and every soldier in Briggs would see their military days end and evolve into days of retirement by a lake, drenched in the purest of silences. And he didn’t know a man who would fear that day more than Buccaneer himself did.

“Don’t look at me like this!” Buccaneer complained. “It’s my whole life, how exactly do you prepare to leave your entire life behind?”

Miles suddenly went quiet. That was a question Buccaneer hadn’t thought through, because Miles knew the answer to it better than anyone, no matter how tough life had been on them. Miles had left his home, been shunned everywhere because of his skin- and his eye-color, and he would have met a quick death if he hadn’t landed himself at the feet of Major General Armstrong. His life had ceased to be a life the day he had left the town where he’d grown up to never return, because of the war that labeled everyone of direct Ishvalan descent as an enemy to Amestris. He had been a soldier, sworn to protect the Amestrian people with his life. And now those people wanted that life to pay for crimes that had never been committed. Then the slaughter, the genocide of his people in Ishval…. The turning cities into ash and sand.

For the longest time, Miles had walked on because the alternative was to become ash, too. And he had wanted to live. He had fought for a new life, different from the one he had walked away from.

_How exactly do you prepare to leave your whole life behind?_

“You don’t,” he admitted in low voice. “It’s never behind you. It’s never behind you.” he repeated solemnly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to move elsewhere. Your whole life doesn’t just disappear because you change paths. Mine hasn’t, and I left more than just one life behind…”

He had left thousands of lives, perishing in the sand, trespassing the boundary between Amestris and desert, between Ishval and vastness. And what he had found, while it didn’t fill the hole that war had carved in his chest, it did show him that life went on even if you thought you’d outrun it.

* * *

 

The uneasiness hadn’t left her fort. If anything, it had found a way to hide in plain sight from everyone, while still making its slow but sure way into all of their hearts. It brought the cold with it, and in the doors of winter more cold could only turn frost into ice so thick nothing could break it.

Olivier barked orders, as if no time had passed since the year before. She no longer paused and made an effort to be nice, which she openly admitted to having never done, and simply walked around in silence, never stopping to greet anyone, never looking up from her feet. Her frown, too, had become a permanent feature on her face, once so vividly happy.

This face was the face of a woman born out of war and reshaped inside it. War made her tenser and ruder, and she couldn’t help it. It was the defense mechanism that had already won her one war.

Now, at the heart of a feeble but still-standing truce, she heard the whispers of war, people muttering between them all over the place, no matter the impact she’d thought her words had had. Olivier never got to hear the full sentences that made her body shake at the thought of what Central was planning, the war they were brewing in their cauldrons like soup, but she knew they never ended well. These things rarely did, and this time she was bound to sit and do nothing, because there was nothing she would be allowed to do.

And even if she could send troops over there—spies, even—to make sure she had an idea of what to expect in the future, Olivier knew she wouldn’t risk lives over this information when they were all so far up north. She wouldn’t endanger her soldier’s lives. And her own, she could not risk. For them.

And, on top of it all, it wasn’t just the war. Ever since that day, when she’d broken into a yellow house to rescue a flower from the gelid winds of fall, it hadn’t been just the war.

Now she had a flower girl in the fort’s mist who clearly missed the life she hadn’t wanted and now thought over, like one ponders whether their decisions have been right. Olivier couldn’t give Zinnia answers to those sort of questions. All she had known was a life far from her family home, a life she had built brick-by-brick with her own toughened hands, and if asked to say anything, she would have reassured Zinnia that she was okay right where she was, with Olivier.

But Olivier knew how selfish of a claim that would be, so she simply hoped Zinnia’s blue days would settle into something a bit more stable. When they didn’t, Olivier herself grew uneasy, like everything in the fort was these days.

And, unfortunately, she snapped, brittle like she had never been. Olivier Armstrong hadn’t regained her legendary strength by going back to her notorious moods, she had turned into a pitiful creature in the eyes of the one she loved most—and what was worse, she had no clue how to step out of it. Every time she spoke, grumbling and sneering, she could feel the words leaving her but she was never able to stop them.

They were getting ready for bed, after another anodyne day, and Zinnia had quietly commented on the lack of empathy Olivier seemed to be showing lately. Zinnia had witnessed her yelling at Miles to get the list for the new route ready _now_ , and at that time she had known to step aside, but now that Olivier’s mood seemed to have calmed down, Zinnia couldn’t keep it to herself. She hadn’t liked what she’d seen, and she was well-aware that despite Olivier’s famous demeanor, she had never seen it before in the months she’d spent at the fort.

Olivier, though, didn’t take the comment well. She didn’t engage in a verbal spar, because of the late hour and how tired that made her, but her words were hurtful and _meant_ to be so.

Zinnia’s eyes opened wide, and she was suddenly so very still on their bed. For a moment, she remained like that, unable to look away from Olivier’s frowning eyes. Then, when she seemed to have regained some soundness of mind, Zinnia promptly stood up.

“Where are you going now?” Olivier asked, realizing now what she had done.

Zinnia, though, replied calmly, her eyes not teary but deeply sad.

“I’ll join the patrols,” she said, “and come back when you’re less… _like this._ ”

And she grabbed the jacket of her uniform from the chair at the desk, putting it on before she left, careful not to let the door slam behind her.

Olivier sighed, tired beyond exhaustion. She had stepped over a very clear line that her tired eyes, blurry after so many hours of work, hadn’t been able to see until she’d trespassed it. She rubbed at her eyes now and slowly stood to her feet and went after Zinnia to fix this before it grew bigger, like a snowball rolling down a hill.

Olivier opened the door and saw Zinnia was still close enough that she wouldn’t have to chase after her like she might have otherwise.

“Come on,” she said from the door, her tone slightly less potent than usual because she didn’t want to accidentally wake anyone up and let them in on this. “It’s late and you don’t have patrol. Don’t pick up a fight.”

“I’m not,” Zinnia said, obviously tired too, as she spun around. She crossed her arms right away, tightly. “But you are. So go get some sleep, I’m not in the mood.”

She tried to walk away again but Olivier’s voice stopped her:

“Zinnia.”

“No,” Zinnia said firmly, ignoring with all her heart the knot in her chest and throat that threatened to spill tears very soon if she didn’t remove herself from that situation right away. “I don’t like being spoken to like that, okay? I don’t know what the hell is going on and I’m not going to ask if you don’t want me to, but it’s not my fault.” She paused. “I’m going to take a walk. Go to bed.”

And she left the way she’d originally meant to.

Olivier stared until Zinnia had disappeared into the stairs, hopeful till the last second, then she went back inside to change into her sleepwear.

She glanced at the empty bed and almost asked it to disappear, but beds wouldn’t follow her command. Instead, she resigned herself to the facts and just got under the covers.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. She never had, not this soon, and let alone without the company she’d gotten used to hugging at night. The mattress felt vast like an ocean without Zinnia there, but she still tried to ignore that, hugging one of the pillows tight against her chest as she let all of her air out.

All she saw in her head when she closed her eyes, though, were armies made of children of alchemy, spitting fire and creating tsunamis at their back, and her brother’s young face was in every one of those children’s, everywhere she looked.

At first, she pretended the image wasn’t there and conjured nicer ones, of times old and past, even of Drachma, to channel her frustration somewhere known to her, somewhere _safe_. Somewhere that made sense to her logical self as much as to the emotional one.

Olivier tossed and she turned, but the war grew bigger in her mind. The fire swallowed entire villages, and the alchemists kept walking forward like inquisitors, feeding its flames with every step that they took. Alex was the first man, the one who lead them, and she finally stirred, uncomfortable, and opened her eyes.

There would not be any sleeping for a long while now.

_Must this war chase me even if I’m not dreaming? Awake or asleep, it’s there._

She kept seeing what she’d always tried to repress into nothingness.

Her brother, a youth who wanted to join the military, not as a soldier but as an alchemist. Her enemies, drenched in their own blood and fallen to their knees before her.

But the prize of her victory was losing who she loved, losing them to the very war, at its very inception. Wars separated more than they could ever hope to unite. Armies gathered and countries formed alliances, but families broke, relationships snapped. Who would Olivier be losing in this scheduled war of Central’s?

_Not Zinnia,_ she begged. _Not her. Not my troops, not my … friends. Not my family._

And that was what they all were, Olivier’s family. She had lost her biological one time ago, of her own accord. Losing the family she had built, stone by stone, step by step, would be too painful. Because this time it would not be her choice to lose it.

Whatever was going on that she couldn’t tell anyone yet she would have to bear in silence, carefully, always on the lookout to find out what it meant, and she would have to learn not to take it out on the people she, in her silence, hoped to be protecting.

Zinnia came back not long after, entering the room on tiptoe to not wake Olivier up, but Olivier wasn’t sleeping. She was lying on the bed, looking at the night sky.

Zinnia got into the bed very slowly, because she thought her deep asleep by now, and Olivier just lay there, holding her breath and trying not to disrupt her as she listened to Zinnia’s own breathing slowing down until her voice reached Olivier’s ears:

“I don’t need you to be soft,” Zinnia whispered, making sure their bodies weren’t touching. “I’m fine with you being like this. If I’d wanted soft, I would’ve returned home a long time ago.” _Even after you kissed me_ , she thought to herself, no matter if she knew that wasn’t entirely true. She had known, back then, that she wanted all of Olivier, cold and terrifying, warm and lively like a bumblebee, and that she wouldn’t flinch at any of it. Because back then she had already known what hid beneath the impregnable wall of Briggs.

Olivier licked her lips and replied, softly and very much aware of her own emotional limitations, now especially challenging because of all the worry:

“No, you definitely don’t want soft. You’re in the hardest, coldest place in the country.” _With the hardest, coldest person in it_ , she added in her mind.

“ _But_ —” Zinnia noted. “—I do need kind. Not nice, not soft, not even loving. Just kind. If there are things you don’t want to share, I understand. But don’t blame me for whatever those secrets cost you. I’m not the prize you pay for them.”

“I’m not very good at kind.” Olivier finally admitted, after some seconds of silence.

“That’s not true,” Zinnia said, turning on the bed to look at her. “You’re not good at _overtly_ kind. But no one here can beat you at caring.”

Olivier didn’t really know what to say to that, she had never viewed it that way. All that she knew was that life demanded certain things from her and that she had to do her utmost to deliver flawlessly. She had people depending on her every move, how could she not be extremely careful as to what that every move entailed?

With Zinnia, too, even her silence had a cost. And she wondered if many words wouldn’t help more than keeping them to herself. If she was worried, it wasn’t just because of the problems with Central; Olivier also worried, more than she knew, that there was something wrong in Zinnia’s life that she hadn’t known how to spot before.

“Still…” Olivier said.  “Lately I haven’t been the only one who’s had trouble with… kindness.”

Zinnia scoffed. “I hope that doesn’t mean _me_ ”

“Since Iver, you’d been… down,” Olivier commented casually.

Down, walking around like a person halfway between human and ghost, doing her duty but staring longingly out of Briggs’ windows and always being exceedingly quiet before bed. And Olivier now knew how much Zinnia liked to _talk._ It had been nothing but weird to watch her fade into that state.

Now, Zinnia didn’t deny that she had been a little sadder than usual.

“Yeah, and?” she said defensively. “Did you ever catch me taking it out on the rest of you?”

“Well, not exactly. But you’ve been withdrawn. That’s why I thought the flowers might… instill new emotions in you.”

Zinnia went livid, but she couldn’t talk herself out of finally making contact with Olivier again, finally pressing closer to her.

“You bastard,” she said. “You could have asked, you know?”

“I figured it might have to do with nostalgia.”

“Not just that,” Zinnia added. “I don’t even know what it has to do with, to be honest. But it’s not war, it’s not as important.”

She didn’t feel that anything she might ever achieve in life would ever stand at the same level at the things Olivier did every day that she woke up.

Olivier was an icon to most, regardless of whether they viewed her negatively or not. Zinnia was a nobody from a town no one knew, without a degree, without a career, without a goal. All she had was her life, and the promise of more time—but she couldn’t even be sure it would be plenty of time.

“Do you think I honestly care?” Olivier said softly. “It’s you. I will always think of anything that goes on your mind as important. So tell me.”

Zinnia sighed.

“I’m growing older away from everything I’ve known, which I left because it didn’t feel as _mine._ And… I don’t know, I guess I miss being that child, nestled securely in her dad’s nest.”

“What do you mean you’re growing older?” Olivier asked, frowning.

At first, Zinnia didn’t dare say it out loud from how petty it was in her head. Then she realized she would just have to or this conversation would fade into silence again. “I’m turning 29 soon.”

“Are you going to make me guess the day or…?”

“Why do you even want to know?”

“Because up to this point I’ve been trying to guess your age and I have found I’m terrible at it.”

“November 21st…”

_Shit_ , Olivier thought, _that’s only a couple of days from now_. This information had caught her with her pants down. She hadn’t been ready for it. Zinnia had such a smile that anyone would have looked at her and called her a child of spring instead of fall, but there she was, a Scorpio who was afraid of her own age.

“And it’s 29, isn’t it? Sweet number.”

“I’m a year closer to thirty, and my life is as astonishingly bare as it’s always been. You have fought and won wars, kept an incessantly growing pool of men alive for fifteen years, and stayed sane in the middle of all of it.” Zinnia exhaled. “I’ve just… been heartbroken, angry, and a runaway. In that order.”

“There’s nothing wrong with running away if you don’t like where you are.” Olivier pointed out. She knew that first-hand, a runaway herself from a younger age than Zinnia. A runaway who didn’t regret being one and the things that running away had brought into her life, this woman in her arms included.

“Yeah, but…” Zinnia said. “I’ve really done nothing else. I’m an adult who has done nothing but serve meat and run the hell out of the butchery once I got tired of that. It’s a little embarrassing to be with someone who’s on the opposite side of the spectrum. And… yes, I imagine I have been a little bit pissed off lately because I was heavily reminded of the frugal life I could still be living if you hadn’t brought me here.”

Olivier smiled. Only Zinnia would use the word frugal here, a touch of the literary words swimming in her flower girl head.

“You’d be selling books and dessert,” she told her. “There would be nothing wrong with that.”

“That’s the wrong stage of life for me. That’s what I should have done in my twenties, not now.”

Olivier abstained from saying that Zinnia was still in her twenties.

“Not only am I a runaway but I also became one too late.” Zinnia scoffed. “Funny how things turned out…”

“Well, you’re not thirty yet,” Olivier said softly, later, after some silence. “But one day you will be, and you will discover the beauty of growing older than the age women are allowed to reach. There comes a point where you become… unstoppable.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Zinnia muttered, almost asleep now. The day had been long, the emotions too intense and too many, and she merely needed to sleep it all off. Maybe she would dawn in a better mood than she had lately. “Did age made you cold as stone?”

Olivier pondered the question, softly turning it around to see it from all angles as Zinnia slowly melted into sleep by her side. She brought forth the memories of herself as a teenager, a young woman, and as a full-fledged general of the Amestrian military. She _had_ used to be a mellow thing, a creature wrapped in fleece and silk, bowing to who she was taught to, but deep within she had always had the spirit of the burning phoenix, the ferocity of the bears of the north, and the cunning nature of the foxes in her fairytales. She had just been taught to suppress it for society to consider her acceptable, she had just never known how powerful it all together could be. Until she had grown older, until age and experience had taught her how to use it.

But it had always been there.

Olivier waited until Zinnia was asleep to reply. She gently touched her cheek with her knuckles, as if caressing a new bloom with trembling fingers.

“No…” she finally answered. “Age didn’t turn me into a cold general. Circumstance did, much earlier than you’d think. And… one day, maybe, if you’re up for it, I’ll tell you the whole story. But tonight I’d rather you rested a little. It’s going to be a crazy next couple of days…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big news! I'm literally a few scenes and an epilogue away from finishing Adversity!!!!   
> As some of you might know *wink wink* I've been debating for a while about what to do once it's all done. Should I post every chapter at once and consider the fic done? Or should I keep the usual weekly schedule? In the end, I've made a little 7-day [poll in Twitter](https://twitter.com/fic_flower/status/1116458612417867781) so I can have an idea of what this smol and beautiful readership wants. Bear in mind, though, that I'd like to take some time with the revision of every unpublished chapter before posting everything at once, if that's the most popular option in the end.
> 
> Aside from that, I hope the teeny tiny Whitney Houston reference was much appreciated - I love that song omg


	38. The here and the now

_And next year it will be thirty…_

And what was Zinnia going to do when she turned thirty? She should have bought a house already, procured herself a nice job that paid well and found someone to split the bills with, and a year short of all of those deadlines weighing in on her she still hadn’t done any of the above.

She was stuck up north. In bed with a woman that sprawled over the mattress, no matter how big it was, when she slept comfortably. And without a single clue of what she would do after winter was over, although she should not have been thinking about any of that.

Winter, per se, still hadn’t begun. That meant she still had time to figure out her life.

_Going or staying, I kind of choose neither. I want all of the in-betweens._

Not that there were any.

Whether she went back to Iver until she got tired of it or stayed her in a fort that could never be her real home, eventually reality would catch up to her. On another one of the birthdays, on the next one.

She really did not partake of the fact that finally she had turned twenty-nine.

It dawned and the sun woke her, because her gift would be to see it. A gift and a reminder that one more day had gone by, and that she had another chance to make it right or fuck it up.

Zinnia felt, for reasons she knew well but chose to ignore, that it was pre-fucked up already. Birthdays were for people with normal lives and normal families that would throw them a party and give them a cute present, not for grown-ups like her that were still lost in their own lives, navigating without direction nor heading, and just hoping to see land someday.

She looked at the sunbeams for as long as her eyes could take it.

They brought life forth. The real, true colors of the few pieces of furniture Oliver owned came alive when the sun hit them. The rest of the time they were dull and dark, perpetually dancing beneath Briggs’ grayness.

“Happy birthday,” said a voice muffled by the pillows between them. Olivier both fought the bed and gave in upon it every night. Zinnia had stopped trying to find a coherent explanation or a solution.

“Shut up,” Zinnia growled, turning on the bed and smashing her head against her pillow. “Don’t remind me.”

“Come here,” Olivier said. “I’ll remind you if I want to.”

“No…” Zinnia complained feebly as Olivier dragged her closer, teasing.

“Yes.”

“No, no, no. We’re going to be late.”

“I’m in charge. I can afford to be late.”

Olivier finally got Zinnia to stop resisting and buried her nose in Zinnia’s neck, an arm around her waist.

“But I can’t. And if neither of us show up, then…” And Olivier let her go. Zinnia knew what she had done, Olivier always froze up at the slightest hint of people knowing.

But today Olivier shouldn’t have.

Zinnia sat on the edge of their bed and picked up her clothes from the chair, changing into the black undershirt.

Olivier pushed the covers back and sat as well. She curled her hand around Zinnia’s, she had clearly noticed the mood she was in.

“Don’t.”

Olivier let go of her hand. “Okay.”

Zinnia turned to meet her eye.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” she said. “I just… It’s not going to be a good day, okay? It’s not personal, it’s just… _weird_.”

And she knew she was behaving like a two-year-old who gets angry at turning three and not being able to say they were two anymore, but she couldn’t help it. The alternative would be to turn into a mini Olivier for the day, and that would only confuse the two of them even more.

If she was going to allow herself her feelings on this day, she would do so warning everyone else—or at least the one who saw more of her—that things wouldn’t get pretty.

“Okay,” Olivier just said, dragging herself to the edge of the bed to get dressed as well. It didn’t bother her that things would be this way, other than they were disrupting her mildly built plans for today. But she could understand why they wouldn’t work.

Zinnia was not her usual self today, and she had to respect that and let it pass, the same way Zinnia had put up with her own bullshit lately.

Ready at last, Zinnia stood up, way faster than Olivier.

“Buccaneer’s must be waiting for me already.”

Olivier didn’t tell her that it was still fairly early.

Zinnia just stood there, staring at her, looking dubious until she quickly took a few steps towards her and leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“See you,” she said, opening the door.

“See you…” Olivier said to the closed door once she was gone.

Zinnia walked to her job station directly. She didn’t stop for breakfast and nor did she want to. Her stomach was closed as tightly as a rock. All she could think of was Central, what would be going down there today.

She couldn’t lie to herself and pretend they hadn’t remembered. They always had, when she’d lived somewhere she could be reached. And this year they would have too, only they would have no number but Olivier Armstrong’s to call, and Zinnia doubted they would do that just to wish her a _happy_ birthday.

Sitting on her chair, waiting for Buccaneer, Zinnia lost herself in thought. Her dad would have been the first to remember the day, coming to greet her on her bed with a huge smile on his face, and she would have acquiesced and let him hold her in his arm, rocking her as if she was a baby. He was the only one allowed to remember her birthday and celebrate it in any way with her, and deep down Zinnia was always happy to see him push past her insecurities into her heart. She would truly miss that today, today she was alone. Here, nobody knew her like he had, and nobody—except maybe one person—would ever get to that point.

As the day advanced, too, she knew her father would have made her cake and spent as much time as possible with her. He had that way of telling her he loved her, by sticking around even if it was in silence, reading something together. Sometimes, if she was writing, he would ask about it, and she would tell him.

Gently, Zinnia woke herself from the daydream of times past. She conjured the image of her mother instead, a harsh woman who would have made her get up at 5 in the morning on her birthday because there was work to be done, and then, perhaps, she might even give Zinnia a pragmatic present. A knife, a better sharper one than those she already had, and meat to practice with it.

And then, when she was off work, Anthony would come over with his eternal smile and sit down somewhere with her, long legs crossed, to talk about himself until he grew tired and left.

“Hello, hello”, Buccaneer announced himself into the room with words as well as his stomping. “What’s the little city girl doing here so early? Had night shift or something?”

That erased the images in her mind, but not the emotions they had left behind. She barely nodded at him, trying to focus on whatever it was they would do today.

That life she had thought up again on such a day wasn’t hers to taste anymore and they would be remembering her alone. 

* * *

 

So, Olivier knew now Zinnia was not in the mood for any surprises. In spite of herself, after finding out a few days prior that it was Zinnia’s birthday, she had set her mind to work and she had concocted a little something. Not to celebrate, not exactly, but perhaps to praise the life of Zinnia. In the hope, maybe, that it would lift her spirits more than the flowers had. Or, at the very least, distract her from the day in itself and remind her that she was loved. Very much so.

Olivier just wasn’t very good at displays of affection.

Her normal idea of something special boiled down to going to the top of the wall to admire the sunlight interweaved between the mountains, and whenever she did indulge in romantic pleasure she always did it head-on, always pragmatically, always thinking first and feeling later.

Today she would have liked to make something useful out of that defect of hers. She would have wanted to cancel their plans for the day, alert everyone she wouldn’t be available for consultation today, and just take Zinnia somewhere in the mountains, wherever she wanted to go spend a quiet morning.

At first, Olivier had thought of that lagoon where once Briggs soldiers had gone for food, in times long past, but it would be too cold to really enjoy what it had to offer other than the sights. It would be just another version of seeing the sunlight, with a twist. After they had returned from their morning spent somewhere far from Briggs’ chaos, Olivier would do what terrified her the most, but she would do it in the name of the specialness of the day. She would have gathered everyone to tell them it was Zinnia’s birthday and that such a day should be celebrated by everyone, honoring her life for a few hours in whatever way they all found proper. And then, as they all mingled together in the lounges, Olivier would break it to them that all they had been gossiping about for a long time was actually happening, right under the noses, and would continue to, if Zinnia saw it fit.

And, maybe, despite the panic in her chest, Olivier’s emotions would have bubbled up and she would have kissed her right there, in front of god and everybody. And, maybe, being afraid of going public wouldn’t have mattered if that made Zinnia happy.

If that meant Olivier was making it all up for the other night, when she had been harsher than she’d meant. If that made up for everything else, too. For her lack of valor, in those spring and summer months; for the way she had rescued Zinnia as if she was just any stray; for denying her feelings until the very last second, until she’d realized Zinnia would never come back to hear them be spoken of out loud.

Now, though, seeing what the situation was, Olivier might as well just postpone it. It was better to cater to Zinnia’s actual needs than make of this day a flamboyant occasion when Zinnia didn’t want it to be. There would be plenty of time for dramatic confessions another day, and that way Olivier would be able to plan it better, according to her own needs and worries.

With a sign, she resigned herself to spending another normal day, with the exception that now she couldn’t escape the concern over whether she was doing the right thing.

She crossed Buccaneer on her way to the office, and she made sure to look distracted enough that he wouldn’t stop to talk to her. Sometimes she thought she was way too personal and lenient with her subordinates… But what could she do, really? The damage was already there. 

* * *

 

The smell of fresh gossip in the morning lifted Buccaneer’s spirits as a rule. It didn’t matter what hid behind it, he could always welcome a little bit of activity around the fort that made its way to his circle. In a world where they barely had time to sit down and read stories or even concoct them (Miles often said Buccaneer had a writing talent), having fiction of any kind, including gossip and interpretations of said gossip, felt like a blessing, as if this place was much more of a home than it was a bastion for war.

Buccaneer appreciated having something to do that didn’t involve preparing for other people’s wars, and sometimes even he realized how selfish it was to appreciate something that may be harming other people’s lives.

Like this _thing_ that had Olivier acting much more distant than it was usual in her these days. Whatever it was, Buccaneer told himself not to think up any strange theories about it. After all, it was none of his business.

That is, until he walked into his department and found that Zinnia had the same defeated expression to her than Olivier had. His gossip senses tingled, avid to find out more about it. He had to shut them down a little and just play it from the usual casual and joking angle.

“Hello, hello. What’s the little city girl doing here so early? Had night shift or something?” Buccaneer said, dropping his coat on the back of his chair and sitting down. “What’s with the long face? Someone died? When’s the funeral?”

“No one died…” Zinnia murmured angrily.

“What’s that?”

“No one died!” Zinnia said.

Buccaneer backed off for a moment, not really sure what was going on. This anger wasn’t typical of her in the slightest.

“Ah, nice, then. For a second there I got scared, thought someone might have. Or was it just your cheerfulness?” He grinned, clearly under the impression that this was the correct strategy to follow if he wanted to appease her. “I think I preferred you when you hummed. Now you seem to want to shoot at the papers.”

Zinnia controlled herself and didn’t say anything, but she wished deep in her heart that she would say a couple of things to this man who thought he had the right to inquire in this manner without consequences. If she had been Olivier, she wouldn’t have kept quiet.

But all she could do now was bite down on her tongue and keep looking at the budgets in front of her.

“Did you argue with the missus or something, kid?” Buccaneer asked further, unaware of what he was causing within her. Zinnia felt like a volcano about to erupt and simultaneously like the base of rock on top of it that prevents the lava to spill. “’Cause she’s looking just as angry and gloom as you are, and boy… I know confrontation when I see it.”

“You know nothing,” Zinnia finally spoke up. “And even if you did, what makes you think I have the slightest bit of interest in your opinions about my private life? We’re here to work, so let’s _work._ ”

Buccaneer watched her for a second. Was she serious? He had never seen her this way.

“Damn, no need to get all petty, Zinnia. I was just teasing.”

She bit her lip once again, shutting her eyes and holding back. She reminded herself that she had no authority and no voice, and that whether she wanted to say would leave Buccaneer’s brain as soon as she’d finished saying it, but… she still exploded.

She pushed her chair away from the desk.

“You know what, you seem to forget that there are _lines,_ which you’re are so intent on crossing so very often. We’re not friends, even if we’re friendly to each other. And just because you know the truth to certain aspects of my life that may intersect with yours that doesn’t give you the right to either pry or insult me with that knowledge. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather you shut the fuck up and let me work, if you’re not going to work yourself.”

Buccaneer gulped and shut up, not at her request but rather at how astonished her words had left him. He always expected such a reaction from Olivier and her gigantic moods, but Zinnia? He could have never seen it coming, not even after a while of hardcore teasing her about Olivier. He wondered what could have happened to the two of them for Zinnia to be _this way._ And, of course, he didn’t mention anything else to her the whole day, not even to ask her if she could pass him the papers she was working on.

He’d survived as much anger as he thought he could for one morning.

On the other hand, Zinnia was grateful for the response to her words. The last thing she would have wanted to deal with today was Buccaneer’s insistent questions and rhetoric, when it was clear she was not going to divulge anything to _him._

Thankfully, what she had said and how she’d said it had scared him into silence. She could see him watching her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the perfect moment to be civil again, but he never dared to.

And once lunch time neared, Zinnia left early, not bothering to say goodbye to him. She’d probably apologize for this tomorrow or later this week, just not today. Today she had earned the right to being angry and gritty.

She waited at an empty table in a corner for the longest time. It was customary now that Olivier and her would have lunch together, careful not to speak too loudly about _personal_ matters and extra careful not to hold hands or touch each other in the slightest. But today Olivier didn’t show up, and eventually Zinnia had to get up and go get her lunch.

It felt strangely alienating to be there alone. But she knew to associate it with her mood. People weren’t coming to sit with her because they had seen her _face_ at a distance and figured out, however rudimentarily, that today wasn’t her day.

Today was nothing but _not_ her day. One year older, one year more of burdens to carry that she didn’t know what the hell to do with… Perhaps it was better to shoulder it alone for the time being, she would not act kindly if someone took the seat opposite her to talk or just have lunch together, not even if that someone was Olivier. And, to be frank, even less so.

She finished the rest of her meal in silence, took her tray back to its place and cleaned it, then she headed to the elevators. A while from now, she would have a place to be, and it wouldn’t hurt to be there sooner. She could sit somewhere and try to improve her mood.

She could sit at a place that smelled like good memories and try to remember that nothing had changed, that today didn’t change anything she had tried to build during the last couple of months.

Zinnia was here now, and that was what mattered. What had always mattered. The here and the now.

And… as she opened the door to the gymnasium, perhaps also the who. 

* * *

 

 _No mercy, no in-between breaths,_ Olivier observed. In spite of her habit of slowing down when fighting with Zinnia, lately it was taking her a bigger effort to do so, and she didn’t have as much time to _observe_ as she liked to. _Doesn’t she feel the burn on her muscles?_

But Zinnia was unstoppable today. Such was her strength and determination that Olivier was sure she would have stopped in the way of a hurricane and managed to dissipate it into tiny breezes. Today, Zinnia could have moved a mountain.

And Olivier was scared she might, again. She had won one of their sparring sessions before, but Zinnia had always insisted on luck, never on skill. If she pushed a little harder—just a little—, she would beat Olivier in combat.

But Olivier didn’t want her to push past her own limits without a care in the world. And right now it seemed as if Zinnia’s sole purpose in life was packing a punch.

“Easy there or you’ll punch holes through the walls,” she said, pulling up her guard against Zinnia’s fists.

Her forehead was covered by a thin curtain of sweat, and her frown marred her entire face, turning it into a face born out of the ashes of war, not victory. Not even participation.

Olivier had never seen her like this.

“I’m not… strong enough,” Zinnia panted, “… to be able to.”

Before Olivier followed her instinct and landed one of her own hits, she just stopped all of a sudden, put her arm down, not breathing half as hard as Zinnia was, and eyed her carefully.

“You’re overtiring yourself,” she said. “That’s no way to train.”  
Zinnia tried to engage immediately, lunging at her.

Olivier stepped away without effort.

“I’ll never learn otherwise”

But Olivier refused to be a participant in this. She put an open palm to stop Zinnia’s fist and Zinnia was made aware of how much _stronger_ Olivier really was. She was blocking all of her intent with just one relaxed hand.

“You’ll never learn _like this_ , being angry at something you can’t ever hit,” Olivier said, “no matter how many times you try to.”

Zinnia finally stopped, taking a hint. Her breathing echoed off the walls, and she was grateful they chose this time of the day to train so they wouldn’t have to do this in front of more people. She sensed a speech, and not precisely a nice little one that she did not deserve, which was why Olivier wouldn’t give it to her.

“Is this about the other night?” Olivier asked calmly.

That made Zinnia feel the heat of anger within her.

“It has nothing to do with you,” she grumbled.

Olivier raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Then?”

“It’s just not going to be a good day, okay? Don’t worry about me. Or about me being angry at you. I’m not.”

Zinnia avoided looking at her in the eye, and Olivier read between the lines and didn’t have to be especially observant to know what that meant.

“You are, though,” she said.

The day hadn’t been about that, that much was true. But Zinnia couldn’t deny that she still had this thorn dug onto her bones, bothering her with the slightest movement. The thorn of feeling, like the rest of the soldiers, that something was going on and not having the names for it nor the change to do something to figure it out or change it.

She quietened her breathing after a few seconds.

“A little,” she admitted. “I don’t like you keeping things from me.”

“It’s confidential. I’d rather you didn’t get involved.”

“And I respect that. It may anger me, but not enough to get me on a mood.”

Olivier walked the couple of steps that separated her from Zinnia and tipped her chin up. This was absolutely not the kind of behavior she demonstrated when she wanted to cheer up her troops, and yet she wasn’t thinking twice about it. It was, put simply, what she needed to do. Get closer, get in there, and be a partner, not a boss nor a trainer. Not a general, hard as that was for her.

“Still,” Olivier said, “my flower girl is moody today. Whatever caused it risks dueling your anger… and mine.”

Zinnia gently moved Olivier’s hand away from her chin.

“Don’t trouble yourself with that and let’s go again. I need to perfect this.”

It took Olivier a second to get back into position. She didn’t feel like pulling an argument out of her ass just for the sake of being a soft girlfriend. She had given Zinnia the perfect opportunity to talk about birthdays or whatever it was, to talk about secrets, all kept on Olivier’s end, or to just… ignore it like she had chosen to.

So Olivier moved like a resort, prepared to face Zinnia’s moods and whatever came with them. She almost smiled, too. It had been a long time since these training sessions were something that happened under the excuse of Olivier needing Zinnia to learn what soldiers knew. Olivier was now engaging in this because it elicited feelings in her that she didn’t have any more time to enjoy. And because Zinnia clearly needed to get it off her chest. 

* * *

 

They shared dinner after sharing a shower. Both their moods seemed to have gotten a little bit better after some warm water and exercise. In the end, Zinnia hadn’t been able to come out victorious. Except she had, because once the fight was over, she didn’t feel as shitty as before and a few smiles had come out easily, with Olivier’s help. It was so ironic that the woman who she had to coax genuine kind humor out of was making her lose her mind laughing about the stupidest thing. For a second, Zinnia forgot what day it was and gave in to it.

At dinner they were caught up with the final rumors of the shower couple, as they were being called around the fort. Olivier smirked and drank beer at a heavy pace, glad to be off the radar even if it was for such a minute or two.

It made her breathe easy for only a few moments, though.

A thought had just come to her, a dormant thought that until now had only brushed the surface of her mind so very rarely, so very feebly. Yet now it had taken on the strength Zinnia had exhibited a while ago.

 _This could be my gift to her,_ Olivier realized.

She took a good look at the room. It was crowded, despite the early hour. Everyone was here: Buccaneer, Miles, Smith, Austin, Mauser… Sitting here and there, faces of old and new acquaintances, all caught up as far as they could with _her_ story.

And she had the immense power to be the one who finished that story in front of them, who confirmed it. She could do what she was so scared of doing, and in doing so she would be taking control over the narrative.

Out of the corner of her eye, her mind stopped everything to look at Zinnia, eating placidly and smiling at her own memories. _No,_ Olivier thought, _I can’t do this because of the narrative. I have to do it for her. This is what she wanted._

Confirmation. Here and now.

In front of god and everybody, Olivier made the decision to come clean, what Zinnia had wanted since the beginning, what Olivier had never been brave enough to choose to do.

Would she now?

And then she leaned in.

“I’m going to do something that’s both crazy and risky,” Olivier whispered to Zinnia.  “And it’s selfish, and probably will come at a bit of a shock.”

“Do I even want to know what it is?” Zinnia was only able to whisper back.

“No,” Olivier said at once. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“Please tell me you’re not going to sing ‘happy birthday’ at the top of your lungs.”

The tension in Olivier’s chest dissipated.

“Of course not. I am not that corny.”

“Okay, then, on you go. I’ll cheer from here.” Zinnia allowed herself a tiny smile. Crazy and risky and selfish notwithstanding, this was the closest thing to spontaneity she was seeing in Olivier in a truly long time, and she definitely planned to sit comfortably somewhere and watch as that spontaneity became something solid.

“Come on up with me when I stand,” Olivier whispered again, tugging a little at Zinnia’s hand, insistently.

“What?” Zinnia chuckled softly.

“If you stand when I do, that means you trust me with whatever I’m going to do. If you don’t, then I’ll just pretend I want to get another serving and call it a day.”

“Olivier, what the fuck is going on in your head right now?” Zinnia giggled now. “You’ve lost me a little.”

Olivier combed her hair back; a rare gesture in her, so used to hiding behind her curtain of hair. And she stood up, leaning one final time towards Zinnia.

“I’m going to do what I should have done weeks ago.”

Zinnia was left gaping at her in utter shock, despite having been warned about what was going to happen and what she could or not do. She had no clue what was going on, but she did know one thing: she trusted Olivier. Probably with her life, but right now with something a lot less dramatic.

Determined, she stood up too. 

* * *

 

Across the kitchens, Miles and Buccaneer sat on a corner of their table, happily indulging on their late dinner. When he saw, Miles’s jaw dropped. He tapped at Buccaneer’s left arm.

“Buc…”

“What?” Buccaneer was presently shoving huge amounts of food into his mouth.

“Look up from your plate, you brute.”

He did. And immediately his spoon fell from his hand, his grip no longer strong at all.

“Holy mother of—”

The whole room had suddenly gone quiet and was looking at the two woman, the only ones standing in sea of sitting men. Buccaneer had now positively forgotten about his dinner.

* * *

 

Olivier cleared her throat. She was starting to be caught up with what she’d done and the consequences it would have, her mouth a little drier than before. _I can’t give up now, I have to see this through._

“Gentlemen,” Olivier said for them all to hear. “Lady,” she said, looking right into Zinnia’s brown eyes by her side. She had to abstain from holding her hand. This was… perhaps not sacred, but paramount for her. To be doing this, for no other reason than because it was what her partner had always wanted… it compared to nothing else. A feeling settled in the center of her chest, rich and heavy like honey, warm like the evening sun in the first days of autumn. For a brief moment, Olivier forgot how full the room was, and what her words meant. She just spoke and felt, and let that carry her where it may. “We are gathered here today, as we do every night, and I am taking this opportunity to make a very important announcement.”

Zinnia blushed at her wording but didn’t interrupt her. She had stood up, she trusted her, and Olivier went on, ignoring the beating of her heart, wild like a horse on a prairie. She chained word after word and she couldn’t stop herself. Even if this turned out wrong, she was doing it. And there was certain bravery in that.

“Some of you may have already heard of this. As a rumor, as something else, perhaps even as a truth someone else sold to you. I intend on admitting to that truth.” _This is it,_ Olivier thought. “For some time now, this woman right here—” Once again, her eyes met Zinnia’s. It was all about her, it had to be. She wouldn’t be doing this for anybody else, not for any of her sporadic visits to the wrong room in the academy, not for Ianthe, even. This was Zinnia only, as it should be. And Olivier gave a one-time part of her to something as unrepeatable as this one woman who had crossed Amestris back to her, when there hadn’t been a proper _her_ to come back to. “This woman … She has been sharing her life with me. Whatever led me to this moment—words, external action—” She said that last bit looking at Buccaneer, who was gaping at the scene as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. “Even fate, if you can believe it, I don’t know, and I don’t presume to ever find out. But tonight I simply wanted to make it public, at long last. I hope it eases your minds, and I hope it helps put an end to the circulation of all and any rumors.” Despite herself, Olivier smiled. “Because it is true. And it’s here to stay. And if anyone has any more doubts regarding the status of my relationship with Zinnia, you all know where my office is.”

She plopped down back on her seat, and Zinnia followed a couple of seconds later, too shocked to react any earlier. She had just witnessed it, it had really happened, and… there was no turning back now. Even if they wanted to keep on denying it, everybody else already knew. The world was cracking itself open, pouring light out of the cracks, and Zinnia felt bathed in all of it. Suddenly, her anger and sorrow, present throughout the entire day, seemed to have been veiled for a few minutes.

And she couldn’t have been able to say if it was a shared mood. Everyone around them was still silent as a tomb, probably taken aback by Olivier’s invitation to openly pry into her relationship. An invitation that none of them had seemed to notice was not serious.

“I don’t think they’ve caught the irony,” Zinnia whispered to Olivier.

Olivier shook her head and raised her voice:

“It was a joke, people! If any of you so much as _dare_ ask me anything about this, I’ll …” she paused for a second. She had no idea which threat would be appropriate for this. Was there anything she might be able to use from their code of conduct? Was it punishable to be curious about a major general’s private life? “…make sure you will have night patrol _inside_ the fort for a month.”

There were several groans after that, especially at the mention of indoor patrols. If they had been at night and in the open air, they all might have pried just to get them. These men loved two things: gossip and sunrises.

And, thus, the magic dissolved and the room fell back into the typical mutters of the hour and the uncanny situation. Buccaneer’s sight fell back to his plate and his food, and most seemed to do as he did. Not Zinnia, though.

Zinnia could not stop looking at Olivier.

“You did it. You fucking did it…” she said, utterly surprised.

“I’m told I’m perceived as pretty fearless,” Olivier boasted. “The stories aren’t wrong about me.”

Zinnia arched an eyebrow. Even in her glee, she could tell how much truth there was in that statement. Olivier might have been a fearless leader, but in her personal life she had the same fears most people did.

“Lies,” Zinnia said. “You’re terrified of the backlash. We’re all scared of something, and you’re scared they’ll all see you differently now.”

Olivier thought about it. _Fear?_ she thought. _I don’t feel fear now._

“I’m not. Not really,” she said. “I don’t care. They know now, they can do whatever they please with that information. My conscience’s clear.” And it was. Finally, after so long, after so many doubts and her iron will to keep it hidden for as long as they could, she had been the one to dust their relationship off the shelves and show it to the world in the measure that they could be shown. All in the name of making this one girl _smile_ on her birthday… “I have given you the birthday present you deserve, and that’s what matters.”

Zinnia wrapped her hand around Olivier’s, a little tentatively. It was the first time since the beginning that they had touched in public. Even knowing that now there was no danger, because now they _could_ do this very thing everywhere without being afraid _,_ she still felt like it was too bold and someone might reproach them for it. No one did, and if someone did look, all they sported was kind smiles.

“Is that what that was?” she asked when she was a bit calmer. “A birthday present?”

How strange, not even the mention of her own birthday—be it cursed as ever—was capable now of erasing the gentle expression on her face.

It was Olivier’s turn to blush now.

“I had something else in mind, but you wouldn’t have liked it. This, though, I thought you might it appreciate a lot more.”

“I do.” Zinnia beamed.

“I’m… glad.”

“I’m only going to ask for something else in return.”

“And what is that?”

“When is _your_ birthday?”

It made Olivier chuckle like never before, not caring who may be watching. But she told Zinnia anyway. “April 17th.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Some things have changed since last week: Adversity is already written and revised in its entirety. According to the poll on Twitter, you want me to keep posting weekly. I've made another [poll](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSejXwPS3x-oKKReepNKrJFQD51VkBwmre0raXPnhTX6xqhKGw/viewform?usp=sf_link) \- a permanent one - so more people can vote. To give you a bit of perspective: If I keep posting weekly, the fic officially ends for you on October 20th. For me it's already over and you have no idea how weird that feels, this story has been everything to me this past year and I'm having a bit of trouble processing the fact that it's over ^^
> 
> Anyway, I hope you're having a good week :3


	39. A letter to the past and the future

She had promised to herself she wouldn’t do it, but as she stared at the pitiful excuse of a list Miles had provided her with so far she knew she would have no other choice.

Buccaneer would have to go out there, on to the snow he so loved and the unknown he loved even more. If there was someone in this fort that had as much thirst for the war awaiting past the border, that was Captain Buccaneer. And this sole fact entranced her and terrified her at the same time. She would handle herself when the war came, but would Buccaneer, ever so invincible he forgot he still bled?

Today, of all days, Miles had gone off on his occasional mid-day shift, and she had Zinnia perched on her lap as if they spent every waking moment like that, keeping her company while she worked. There was something fundamentally right about it. It felt good to have Zinnia’s weight on top of her, reassuring, somehow, that she wasn’t in danger of disappearing.

It was Zinnia, then, who saw her scribble Buccaneer’s name in the list for the Flower Route.

“Am I getting worse at reading your handwriting or does that say _Julian_?”

“It says Julian,” Olivier confirmed, leaving her pen flat on the table. “What other choice do I have?”

“Plenty,” Zinnia said. “It’s too soon to be drafting this when it’s possible Miles hasn’t even been able to get it around the whole place.”

“If gossip can travel that fast to get people to peep at us, then I’m _sure_ official news must as well.” Not to mention that she’d gathered a significant portion of all her men so they would listen to her new proposal.

Zinnia put the paper away dramatically, pushing it further and further with one extended hand as Olivier kept her on her lap and prevented her fall to the floor and/or table.

“Give it time,” Zinnia said with one of those shit-eating grins that made Olivier want to lock the door, turn down the lights, and kiss her until their lips grew dry.

She was about to suggest such a thing when Zinnia promptly climbed off her lap.

“And _where_ are you going?”

“Someone’s got to tell the man. I want to be there when he hears; might as well come from me.”

“You want to be there?”

“I deserve to laugh at his expense after he’s meddled so much in _my_ life to make _you_ happy.”

Olivier smiled.

“Well, I can’t say it hasn’t worked…” The smile turned into a smirk.

Zinnia lifted an accusatory finger.

“Don’t you dare play good cop now. You hated it,” she said.

“I don’t hate the happy part,” Olivier said, smug, intertwining her fingers with Zinnia.

Zinnia looked as if torn between two worlds.

“ _One_ quick peck and I’m out. I need to laugh at the man, it will be cathartic for me.”

“One quick peck,” Olivier promised.

And she delivered. 

* * *

 

“Hello!”

She walked in—or, rather, skipped in like a little girl who had just gotten a lollypop. It was a rather peculiar feeling, after the turmoil of anxiety she had gotten those past few days, but she hung on to it. Maybe laughing at an old man for getting his long-coveted wish made her cruel, but it was at least lifting her spirits a little. Plus, she hadn’t come here _only_ for laughter. She could do that well enough on her own without being present.

She had come down here because, deep down, she wanted to be the bearer of good news and make _him_ as happy as he had made her and Olivier with his incessant meddling. An eye for an eye, and the world did not go blind but ever-seeing.

“Chirpy. I like it,” Buccaneer said, turning immediately to greet her with his eyes as well as his voice. “What changed? Did you make up with the ‘gf’?”

_Gf? He’s said ‘gf’ out loud?_

“Don’t use slang,” she said with a sly smile. “It doesn’t become you.”

“Did you, though?”

Zinnia sat down on her stool and crossed her legs.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“So now my girls are happy?”

He asked it so sweetly she almost didn’t notice the nuance. He had concocted this little union and now he took the credit, which truthfully did belong to him. At least a third of it did. Without Olivier’s interferences and Zinnia’s confirmation, his efforts would have left with the wind.

She raised an eyebrow. “Your girls?”

“Well, she’s always been my girl,” Buccaneer said, thinking out loud. “And you’re a recent acquisition, I wasn’t going to say girl and a half.” That made Zinnia smile. She knew well enough already that she wasn’t just a half of a friend to him. And he knew her chirpy moods well enough to figure out that probing a little would not hurt him: “So? What did she do to win you over?”

Zinnia blinked in confusion. “You saw.”

Buccaneer’s whole face suddenly became a beacon of light. “ _No_ …”

He had finally tied the loose ends into the conclusion that now he knew was right.

“Well, to be honest I would have gone running back to anyone who confessed their profound and forbidden love for me in a crowded kitchen,” he said, and proceeded to chuckle right after.

“Yeah,” Zinnia said.

“That’s one hell of a thing.”

“I know.” She blushed a little. To be honest, she hadn’t thought about it much, but her mood had instantly evaporated into something calmer the second Olivier had shared the news with everyone. If she had been able to ask for anything for her birthday, had she liked it, she would have asked exactly for what Olivier had given her. “Might as well have put a ring on me.”

“Not the type.” Buccaneer chuckled again. He patted her hand. “So, you’re less… angsty now, eh? Back to the old humming girlie I know?”

Zinnia looked down. She figured she had really been a bit grumpier than usual around him.

“Back to that, yes,” she said. “Now I don’t have to hide whether I love her or hate her. That’s… one hell of a thing,” she said, repeating his own words back at him for lack of better ones. _And you call yourself a writer?_ “But say one word out of place again and I _will_ kill you.”

Buccaneer feigned to be offended, a lively hand placed on his clavicle.

“You tiny thing, kill me?? I’d like to see you try.” He had said the exact same thing to Olivier once. It had not gone well. She had won the spar, plugging him into a wall and making a dent on it for everyone to see. She hadn’t killed him—she hadn’t meant to—but her demonstration had been clear: she was stronger than the strongest man in Briggs.

But Buccaneer looked at tiny thin Zinnia, who barely had any muscle on her bones and had only been trained to fight the most rudimentary of fights, and could only laugh at her provocation.

She uncrossed her legs and frowned.

“Don’t mock me. I’m good with a knife. I can skin you,” she said.

She didn’t break eye contact for a few seconds, trying to intimidate him. He stared into her eyes and wondered if, truly, this child would be capable of such a thing. She had always been so civil, so mild… even in her anger. He couldn’t really imagine her gutting someone. At least, not until a few seconds had passed and he glimpsed a bit of the ferocity within her, something she could bring out at any moment, with terrible results for everyone else. He hoped she would preserve that for the wars to come.

Then, as intensely as it had come, her brown eyes became kind once more, and she crossed her legs again. This was the Zinnia he knew.

“Also, I almost forgot with the chitchat,” she said. “She’s approving you for the new route. You’re going out there, Buc.”

Her smile now was more than honest. She knew how much it meant to him to leave the fort, to be on his feet again to do something dangerous yet worthwhile to his people. He had been hungering over this particular task since the Drachman Wars.

“WHAT!” he squealed. Of course, his expression, between surprise and absolute glee, was worth coming down there to see it. And it did not make her laugh in the slightest. Instead, it made her heart feel light and happy. He deserved a chance, old as he may be, because Olivier could still and always use his tenacity. “I’m… going?”

_The poor thing can’t even believe it,_ she thought.

“So she said. It’ll be just an inauguration, won’t last as long as it should. And that’s why she’s letting you go. I came down to tell you because she’s…” Zinnia sighed dramatically. “…busy preparing everything.”

Zinnia wasn’t even sure if Olivier would have wanted to come down here herself. On one hand, maybe he would have rejoiced in seeing Buccaneer’s eyes so vibrantly alive because of the news, but deep down Zinnia knew Olivier wouldn’t betray the image they all had of her, the image of a woman who had forbidden him to go on the MM batches for as long as he’d been missing an arm.

“You can tell her…” Buccaneer now was tearing up from joy. “Thank you from me.”

She smiled, wiping an indiscreet tear away, and planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

“I will, captain,” she said, and then she left with a nod.

She would never really know the extent of the happiness that had crossed the captain’s body at hearing the news that, at last, he would be of use to the same practices he was designing and doing budgets for. He would be once again part of it all, part of the action.

And he could never face Olivier about it; he would cry like a baby and she would sneer, even if deep down she was the first one to feel happy for him.

_I didn’t even have to pester her for this this time,_ he thought. _She thought of me all on her own._

He couldn’t deny, and nor could anyone, that the heart of the Ice Queen was warmer than rumor might have you believe.

* * *

Olivier had continued working during Zinnia’s absence. She saw no reason to just wait on her ass for however long it took Zinnia to tell Buccaneer the good news and probably make his day in much better words than Olivier herself would have.

Besides, she had some other things to be paying attention to aside from the list. Finding her beloved captain a home for next summer had turned out to be a more complicated task than she would have originally believed. Not only had he shown no predilection towards any of the options he had, but he also rejected any of her proposals. Iver was too tiny, building a cottage in the mountains would take free time which he didn’t have, and going as far as North City felt like betrayal to him. So, despite all her extensive looking, she still hadn’t found a place for Buccaneer to move out to.

And she had hoped, once, that this would be her one and only problem. But winter was here to stay and their rations were starting to grow stale and dull, always potatoes and meat and soup. The transports from North City came less and less and they had to make do with what they had. Since Zinnia didn’t involve herself in the kitchen, no one was really complaining; they were used to the worst of the worst. It characterized them, the brutes of the north.

To top her day off, Olivier had not been able to stop herself from remembering her past mistakes and her inability to make an invincible army out of her people. There were no signs of war yet, and she had no clue how to anticipate to them, but when there would be she wanted to be ready. And so far she had the same tools she always had: men and machinery.

God only knew what the other brutes on the other side of the border would bring to battle. She hoped her firepower could take them. After all, her only novel defense had been alkahestry, and she had failed at finding out how to use it, too.

The door to her office opened again after a longer while than Olivier had imagined.

“Done?”

Zinnia nodded and closed the door behind her. “He _squealed._ You could’ve done this much sooner, we could’ve ambushed him, made everyone see.”

“Everyone already knows what he is like. It wouldn’t have had the desired effect,” Olivier scoffed.

Zinnia gave her a pointed look, eyebrows almost up.

“Did you and I exchange moods?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why are you being like this?”

Olivier rolled her eyes. She wasn’t being _like_ anything. She was just… handling everything again, back in the old game of cat and mouse between victory and failure. Not defeat, because they would need an actual war and an enemy, but just failure. Inability to carry out what needed to be carried out.

Still, Olivier said nothing to the teasing.

Zinnia saw right through her, and as per usual, decided it was her chance to poke around a little bit until the truth came out. She was especially good at distracting Olivier with words until she chose all on her own to spill it out.

“Have you tried sleep?”

“Very funny.”

Zinnia sat down on her lap again, slowly, because she knew Olivier liked having her this close and in such an intimate manner. They wouldn’t do this with a public, but they had the entire office to themselves now and would still for a little while; she could afford this display of physicality while she tried to help.

“Have you tried thinking that that new route is probably gonna help lots?” Zinnia asked again.

“Not like it should,” Olivier replied.

“But it’s something, right? What else would you need to make it perfect?”

Olivier actually snorted at the question, and more than at the question, at the answer. “A miracle,” she said. And once she started speaking, more and more words came, all of them true and all of them stinging. “For Buccaneer to finally settle down, which at his age you would have thought he would have done already.”

Zinnia smiled. “ _Clearly_ he hasn’t…”

“Clearly.”

“Eventually he’ll move his ass and find a home, if he sees himself living on the snow.”

“Trust me when I say he won’t,” Olivier said. “He trusts me too much with his life, even if his mission in mine is to make it miserable. He won’t expect me to banish him.”

“He’s a good man,” Zinnia said, nodding. “We’re all looking for a solution. I’ve seen Miles reading up on houses and territories as well. Eventually, Buccaneer will give in to one of us. Together, we’re more stubborn than he is.”

“I’m half tempted to just push him to your place, if you’re—” Olivier glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “—well … really staying here.”

The room felt quiet for some seconds. The thought of ‘staying’ was in the air like a trapeze artist, dancing with the dust, making itself visible, and none of those two women liked being aware of it.

_“_ It’s not like I’ve made my choice about that. But it makes no sense for me to be at Iver _.”_ Zinnia looked down. She didn’t want to say this looking at Olivier: “At least not immediately.”

Ah, so the girl wasn’t planning on staying in the fort forever? Olivier didn’t know whether that made her happy or saddened her more. Clearly, she couldn’t have stayed forever and this dream would eventually have stopped being so, but Olivier had always kind of thought that what would separate them in the end would be the laws of the military she was supposedly abiding by, not Zinnia’s own choice to leave.

She had been about to once, and Olivier had almost lost her.

In any case, even if she would be, too, almost losing her again, Olivier would respect the separation. It was the least she could do, after all the good times and all the lessons she had learned.

“Regardless,” Olivier said, shaking her head to drive those thoughts away, “I might have no other choice but to ask you to stay, at least some more months until we can find _you_ a lodging, so he can have a home.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not leaving him out on the snow, as much as people think that’s what I’d do.”

“It’s a little bit true. If it were someone else, you would. You just happen to like Buccaneer.” Zinnia said, lost for a moment in the same thoughts Olivier was just entertaining and simply hiding it better. She had no desire to think about her own future when she could help Buccaneer’s along. “And what else? What else is missing from ‘perfect’?”

“I don’t know…”

“Yes, you dooo,” Zinnia insisted.

“A… a downright miracle. And I don’t believe in those.” Olivier sighed. “I want for Northern Command to fucking send us worthy provisions. I want that list for the next expedition, but no one seems to want to join in.”

Zinnia thought about it.

“They’re scared, I think.”

“My soldiers aren’t _scared_ of anything.”

“Everybody’s a little wary of war, don’t you think?”

“We can’t be. We’re trained not to be. And… if they are, they need to get over it. If it’s war that awaits when we try that route, then we shall meet it proudly. We’ve been waiting for it.”

Zinnia shook her head. _“_ Not everyone needs this war like you do,” she said. “And I don’t even know why you need it.”

“Do you think I do?” Olivier held Zinnia closer, adjusting her weight on her. “I’ve been anticipating to it for almost two decades. It’s _my_ war. There won’t ever be another one for me, I don’t care how many our country is currently fighting. Defeating Drachma is my purpose in life.”

“You already did that once, years ago. Why a second time?” Zinnia asked, philosophical.

“That wasn’t a defeat. It was postponing the inevitable. We should have been more hostile from the beginning… but—” Olivier drowned in old memories, of being a subordinate herself. She had had no voice or say back in the day, barely another dot of blue in an army of thousands who had to follow the leader until death. But death had never come, and war had, but too late, when it was already almost lost and there had been no choice but to engage. “The general at the time thought it _unwise_ … Unwise, my ass. We wouldn’t be here armed to the teeth—and quite ineffectively, might I add—if we had sent those bastards flying back to their fucking land on the first try.”

“Yeah,” Zinnia pointed out. “And maybe only half of you would have survived. Wars _are_ carnage.”

“And this one will be, too.” Olivier said, serious. Normally she spoke of war as a formality, but she knew better than most what one lost in wars other than one’s own life. One lost friends, companions, and faith. Olivier had never been much of a believer in anything, but she had had faith in humanity, once. Now her faith was scarce, directed only at those she had seen grow alongside with her. Now, too, she had more to lose than just companion’s lives or her own. She had Zinnia’s to protect, and she refused to admit she could ever lose it too. “I’d … I’d rethink staying here while that’s still on the horizon. I’ll just have to find something else for the captain; you can’t fight with us. I can’t let you.”

Zinnia smirked, joining her hands behind Olivier’s shoulders. “Oh, suddenly the general wants to abide by the rules?”

“No. I don’t want to bury you,” Olivier just said. “That’s all.”

“No one’s _burying_ me.” Zinnia reassured her.

“I wouldn’t have the tools to… to avoid that. We have one doctor. If I’d managed to get my hands on alkahestry—” She groaned. “It was supposed to grant me a self-healing army that wouldn’t fall in battle. And it would have guaranteed your safety. I would be able to bring you back if you fell.” And Zinnia would fall. Now that the big news was out, anybody might hear that the notorious general up north had someone fragile to protect. She was likely to become a target. “But I failed on that as well.”

“So? All failures can be returned to later, to fix them a little. What would you need to do? I can call Candie…”

“I need what I’ve always needed,” Olivier interrupted. “A book on alkahestry, someone who knows it—a Xingese member of royalty or whoever can be considered an expert on the matter—coming here to teach me specifically.” So she could raise armies back from the dead. Her nightmares, neutralized thus.

“Okay, I don’t know shit about Xingese royalty, and you can call me out on my bullshit if I’m wrong but… wasn’t your girlfriend Xingese?”

“Yes?” Olivier didn’t see the connection. Or didn’t want to see it.

“Have you thought about talking to her? Honestly.”

She snorted again. “Of course not.”

“Why the fuck not? She might know something. And she’s probably still living where she used to, or close enough that it makes no difference.”

“Allow me to have my doubts about it…” Olivier muttered.

Zinnia put a hand to her cheek, wiping away unshed tears from her cheekbone. She had such a round face that her cheekbones passed completely unnoticed, and Zinnia loved that.

“That would be one less problem,” she said. “Maybe you’d still have terrible rations, and Buccaneer to accommodate somewhere in the border, and just tanks against Drachma’s empire… But you’d have one more skill. And I’m told you like hoarding those like a dragon with shiny coins.”

Zinnia cupped Olivier’s face now with both hands.

“So what if I do? I’m not going to focus all my research on an … ex-girlfriend.”

“Listen to me,” Zinnia got serious. “I didn’t unearth all those books and called that many people so that you now can cower in your goddamn horizontal tower while the solution to the problem may have been there in perfectly good reach the whole time.”

Olivier opened her eyes wide, put a hand to Zinnia’s.

“Wait, you _called_ people? Didn’t you used to work at that tiny bookstore?”

“Did you really think we had books about alkahestry in the ‘tiny bookstore’?” Zinnia counterattacked.

“Never mind.”

“Just _call_ her. She might know something we don’t.”

“And what would I say?” Olivier said. “She left me at a station, and with good reason.” _Omitting details, very nice, Armstrong_. Important details. “If I write to her because I need something from her, she will personally see to me never getting what I need.”

“Maybe she’ll lecture you on… whatever you did to anger her. But you might get answers. And if that can cheer you up… why not? You did send a boy south for a flower I was probably named after, wouldn’t you send a boy south for information on something that benefits your men?”

Olivier grunted. Zinnia tipped her chin up, smug.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“No, now you say it.”

Olivier grunted again. “I would,” she said. “I’d send someone south.”

Zinnia exhaled.

“Then why not write a letter? Pick up a phone? It doesn’t require a third-party.”

“I don’t have her phone number.”

She’d never needed it.

“Then write to her.”

And Olivier just nodded, burying her face in Zinnia’s neck, as she’d been dying to all evening. 

* * *

 

Later that night, she sat alone in her office. Miles had just left to go to dinner, but she had stayed. She had told Zinnia not to save her a seat in the kitchens.

Now, Olivier stood before a collection of scratched lines on a piece of paper. She must have written a dozen versions of _Dear Ianthe,_ and none worked for her. They all read either too personal or too impersonal, and she wanted to be neither.

She still couldn’t believe she was doing this. It had been fifteen years, she had forgotten the sorrow and the pain of having lied and having left, but Ianthe had always been one to hold a grudge. In her heart, Olivier knew this letter would only anger her again, stir old feelings back into action. And older Ianthe would be more than capable of getting on a train that took her all the way to the north only to chastise Olivier as if they were twenty again.

In the end she settled for, quite simply: _Ianthe._ Short and to the point, without unnecessary flourishes.

_Ianthe,_

_I’m writing to you on behalf of the Amestrian Military._

 

_What else?_ Olivier though to herself. _Just make someone else write the goddamn thing, if you can’t appeal to her the way you used to_.

 

_I know it has been a long time, longer than I would admit face-to-face. I don’t do this so I get to apologize fifteen years too late or so we can get closure. Truth is, if it weren’t because of a matter of national importance, I probably would not be writing to you. I would always prefer to leave you to your life, and I believe you know this. But this is not about me any more than me leaving was._

_Now I find myself requiring your services as a connoisseur of alkahestry. The outcome of the war up north may very well depend on you providing that service, and as you may know there are people here under my protection. I intend to use the power of alkahestry to reanimate my soldiers, should they fall in battle, but I’m short of an expert who can either stay under our roof to provide such a practice or teach us how it works._

_Under any different circumstances I wouldn’t be writing this letter to you, but your aid to my cause might be the catalyst of a different war, and if I can prevent any casualties, I will. I always will._

 

_That’s why I left before you could follow, to prevent yours_ , she thought now.

 

_If there is any chance you might be of help, please contact me. I will procure transport to the north for you or whomever you can point me to._

_Hoping you are well._ She wrote it and immediately scratched it twice. No flourishes, she reminded herself. This was business, not rekindling something that had been dead for years, at least on one end of it. Ianthe had walked out of the station, hating her forever, and Olivier had gotten on her train, regretting it forever.

Olivier leaned back on her chair.

_Sincerely, Olivier,_ she finally wrote. She had used just her first name. Maybe Ianthe would take it to mean there had never truly been any hostility there, and Olivier couldn’t know that. Yet she still didn’t add her surname. To Ianthe, her surname had been the least important piece of her. And fifteen years later Olivier was still thankful for that; back then she had needed to be stripped free of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god I had forgotten about the mush. One wrong choice and this story would be all mush, and I would not complain, but there's still plenty of stuff to get to aside from the cuteness, although rest assured that I will revisit the mush many, many times ~~and I've even started outlining for a sort of alternate oneshot to Adversity that is only mush and cuteness and corny lines, so... yeah it's that bad XD~~.
> 
> As for the posting schedule, since there's sort of a tie in the poll, I've kind of decided I'm just going to keep on posting weekly unless a huge number of people vote for the other option or something. I hope that's cool ^^. 
> 
> It feels really really weird to be posting this story in installments when it's all over now for me, like ... it's almost a completely different story now that it's finished than it used to be back when I was still writing it.


	40. Holiday angst

“She’s not going to reply,” Olivier said as she went through her personal mail. She didn’t have much of that, and hadn’t for years, but occasionally there was a letter from her parents. Not her brother, he had had the good sense of staying away after Ishval, after seeing the fire in her eyes and deciding that recoiling was the wisest option for him.

Today she had in her hands an invitation to a ball, from her father, his calligraphy as stylistic as she remembered, all flourishes and no substance. She’d taken a quick look at it and discarded it. She hadn’t attended one of those parties her family had thrown since she’d been a teenager.

“These things take time…” Zinnia told her calmly. “Or did you expect a letter in your mailbox three days after you sent yours?”

“Firstly, we don’t _have_ a mailbox. Secondly, it would take three days for the letter to even arrive.”

Zinnia grinned. “Good, then I don’t need to talk you out of worrying, you know how to do it yourself.”

Olivier grunted. “I’m not _worrying._ ”

Zinnia put a hand on hers. “She’ll write back,” she said solemnly.

“What if she doesn’t?”

“At least you tried. That counts.”

“Not if it doesn’t get me what I want.”

“Then drop it. You don’t need healing powers, you have the best army on Amestris, and you’re a good leader. Even if the war is rough on you, chances are you’ll win.”

“What do you know about war?” Olivier asked, trying to be biting. She got a comparatively calmer response from Zinnia:

“What you’ve told me, bit of what I’ve heard. I’m no stranger to these things _now._ I’ve seen you all in action, you’re good enough.”

“She won’t write back,” Olivier said again, sighing. “She’s still angry at me.”

“I refuse to believe she’s been that angry for fifteen years. She loved you, too. After that, I doubt she’d hold a grudge for so long.”

“Oh, you don’t know her,” Olivier said. “She’s got it in her. I wouldn’t put it past her to be so angry at me she’ll tear the letter apart in her green hands…” She smiled at the memory of a girl watering plants in her garden, resting against the trunk of the magnolia tree, turning her face at Olivier and smiling gently.

For years, that was the image Olivier had conjured in her head when she’d thought of Ianthe—a happy, bright girl in her favorite place in the world, a grin on her lips. Her other memories would have been too harsh on her at a time when Briggs had already been that in its place.

She preferred to remember what had been good about it, rather than allow the wet and ugly bits to reach her now that she had no use for feeling melancholy. Ianthe wasn’t in her life anymore, letter notwithstanding, and she wasn’t trying to bring her back into it, just… to reach out, go on with her life after she’d gotten what she’d wanted.

Ianthe would, no doubt, call her names for this, too. Call her selfish and arrogant, and maybe—just maybe—Ianthe’s grudge would have faded just enough that she would help Olivier regardless.

Olivier would have, no questions asked, if instead of an invitation to a ball from her father she had received a letter from Ianthe asking for protection. Olivier might not abandoned her post to go save Ianthe, but she would have sent some men south. She would have _done_ something.

And now she had to sit here and wait for that feeling to be reciprocated, even if it were just a little bit.

In her heart, she knew the truth, but she could also hope.

She could hope that smiling girl in the garden was still there, somewhere, ready to forgive her.

“Would you like to see a picture?” Olivier asked Zinnia tentatively. She wasn’t too sure this would be the right thing to do, considering. But Zinnia’s eyes lit up with curiosity.

“You’d never said you had pictures!”

“Just the one. I brought it here with me, after everything.”

Olivier went get it. It was in her personal drawer, underneath all the writings Zinnia had been giving her for the past few months.

It was a simple picture, without a frame, old and a little worn by time and abandon. Olivier hadn’t really looked at it since she’d been promoted, and perhaps long before that. Once she had grown comfortable in the fort, she hadn’t needed nostalgia to keep her bound to Central. She had left those lands behind and had been left to focus on her true home.

And yet she had never thrown this away.

Olivier handed the picture to Zinnia, carefully, and she took it in her hands as if this was a sacred good.

In the shot, Ianthe and Olivier had stood together. Zinnia made a noise when she saw that Ianthe was even shorter than Zinnia herself was. The two women’s hands weren’t linked together, and there was nothing else in their postures that might have suggested anything romantic, except for their eyes. They were both looking at each other, rather than at the camera, lost in each other’s gaze, even if their bodies were mostly facing forward. Zinnia wondered who had taken this photograph, and by the scenario, in the garden of a humble Central house like her own, Zinnia figured Ianthe’s parents had taken care of it.

Olivier looked so… different in this picture. Her face was prominently thinner, and she definitely had noticeable cheekbones, although her frame was considerably larger than tiny Ianthe’s. She’d looked… _young_ as well. Zinnia couldn’t have said how exactly, but she could see hope and _life_ in the eyes of younger Olivier’s which now took longer to coax into making an appearance.

Back then, of course, Olivier had seen no wars, even if she would have soon been sent to join one.

Zinnia looked at Olivier now, the real her, and tried to imagine how long had it been since the picture and how long after that had she been sent north. She couldn’t have been more than 19 in that picture, sixteen years younger, sixteen years more hopeful, more alive.

“This was taken shortly after she first took me home,” Olivier muttered. “Her parents loved me.”

“No wonder why,” Zinnia said.

“I wouldn’t have expected them to,” Olivier said calmly. “I was a soldier, their daughter was a pacifist. I could have been a very bad influence for her.”

“You have kind eyes, Olivier,” Zinnia said, looking at those eyes now. They were the color of the Arctic sky. “A little cold at times, a little scary. But kind, underneath it all. I’m sure they knew how to see that.”

There was a pause.

“We were happy, then,” Olivier said, more to herself than to Zinnia. “We had such different lives, but back then we hadn’t cared. We thought we could make it last forever.” She smiled sadly. “She thought I might let her come north with me, the fool…”

“The important thing,” Zinnia muttered, unable to unsee the parallels, “is that you’ve learned. You let _me_ follow you north. You let me in.”

“I didn’t let her come because of a war. There might not be a war right now, but I won’t let you stay here when it breaks out,” Olivier said seriously now. “I can’t.”

Zinnia sighed. She didn’t feel like talking about it again. If she left, she wanted it to be her choice.

“She’ll send you a letter back,” Zinnia almost promised. “I know she will.”

Olivier exhaled slowly. She knew how wrong Zinnia was, but decided not to add wood to the fire. “I hope you are right,” she only said, and Zinnia gave her back her picture so she could put it back where it belonged.

From then on, Olivier tried not to think about the letter, travelling to Central, first on a train, then all the way through Central City’s intricate streets until it found the last loving place in the area Olivier had been at before leaving. She could still picture it perfectly, the stone house and the red and green vines climbing up its front wall, slightly covered by the magnolia tree’s branches on the side, and with those tiny stone stairs—worn and eroded—that Olivier and Ianthe had used as their private spot at night, when Ianthe’s parents had been sleeping. They had looked at the stars, then, wondering what there could be in the infinite universe and if they would ever get to know before they died.

Sometimes, during a clear night on top of the wall, Olivier would still find herself looking up at the sky and ask herself the same question, alone this time, thinking of what Ianthe might be doing across the world and if she still remembered their hushed conversations under that starry night.

Now, the thought of past times almost suffocated her more than those of the present. The present and its lack of answers. The present, her irrepressible fear of Ianthe’s wrath, fifteen years later, and Zinnia’s patronizing ‘she’ll write back’ every time they talked about it.

Olivier had a gut feeling about it. And she usually knew to trust those over what her own head was telling her to think. Deep down, her insides writhed with the knowledge that her letter had come a decade and a half too late.

After two weeks had passed, she no longer felt the oppression in her chest when thinking about getting no mail. She accepted it, quietly, as winter arrived truly to the north in fact as well as in practice and snow covered the already-white grounds of Briggs. She had had no choice but to move forward.

Forward into more tanks, oiling the canons, and spending not half a minute a day without a man somewhere with his eyes on the border. Just as she could feel Ianthe’s silence, she could feel the tumults at the border, and the chants of war that would soon approach. Olivier had grown into a woman amidst war and conflict, she had emerged from it as who she was now, and who she was read the destinies to come from the ashes in the wind as well as her eyes would read words.

War and winter had both chosen the same month, the last month of the year, to start rising with the sun every morning, then conceal themselves during the day, and come back with a vengeance as soon as the daylight began to fade.

Olivier, tucked in bed beside a sleeping Zinnia, thought she could hear the drums in the distance, the footsteps of thousands of warriors on still-soft snow making their slow but inevitable way to Briggs.

Inexplicably, she fell asleep without fear.

War and winter were the languages she best spoke. 

* * *

 

It was the middle of the day, the sky was blue and clear as in summer, and Zinnia and Buccaneer were caught up in the middle of a snow fight.

Olivier watched them from afar as they screamed and squealed and gasped for air. Miles had entered her office not long ago with a silly small smile on his face and had asked if she had a minute, then he had brought her to one of the open areas in the front of the wall to contemplate the scene.

She had never seen anything sillier that had the power to warm her heart this way.

“I’m going to get ya!” Zinnia was saying, zig-zagging like a deer towards Buccaneer, a snow ball in her hand. It didn’t take long before Buccaneer ducked with a chuckle and Zinnia tried to hit him anyway.

Then it was her time to run, giggling like a toddler.

“No, no, no, no, nooooo. No, don’t you dare!” She squealed again as Buccaneer stomped his snowball on her back. “I’m going to kill you, you monster. I changed into this this morning.”

She began gathering snow again as fast as she could while he did the same. This was a battle of speed, because Olivier had no doubt that they were both more than capable of hitting their targets. Zinnia, too, worked with the advantage of size, she thought. Buccaneer was much easier to hit in his humongous height and width than a girl smaller than Olivier herself.

“You know I don’t care, right?” he was saying now, finally getting up as he hauled the biggest snowball ever on his two strong arms. He’d gotten snow on his jacket. “Don’t think you’re gonna stop me by complaining.”

Zinnia looked around as if wondering where to run, then gave a high-pitched squeak, closed her eyes with a frown, and tried to cover herself with her thin arms.

Buccaneer’s chuckles echoed in the distance.

Olivier couldn’t help but laugh, too, when she was witness to Buccaneer’s gentle pouring of the ball onto Zinnia’s hair.

“That’s not fair!” she was screaming, chasing him around after that with her hands bare. She wasn’t going to make another snowball, Olivier realized, she was just laughing and running, trying to get a hold of him. “It’s so not fair, come on! Come here, let me pay you back.”

“Gotta catch me first, kid.”

Zinnia put up an accusatory finger at him.

“I’m so going to. I’m going to catch you and—and—and do what I want with you. You’ll be a burrito of snow.”

She kept chasing him in circles, but even when laughing as hard as they both were, he just was faster. Buccaneer looked like the kind of man who was all strength and no speed, but he moved with agility for both his age and his weight.

Olivier remembered seeing him dodge larger snowballs than the ones he’d thrown earlier. She remembered withstanding his hits more stoically than Zinnia was right now. _Those were such simpler times…_ How Buccaneer had immediately gone after her, back in the day. She’d been the small target, shorter than him and the new face in the fort, and Buccaneer had smelled the novelty off her like a hound smells blood.

“Can’t catch me, kid,” Buccaneer was saying now.

“I will. Just—I will, god fucking damn it!”

“Watch that tongue. You’re too young and innocent to swear.”

“Innocent, _my ass!_ ”

Olivier at this point was no longer listening to them, she was lost in her own memories. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been someone under Buccaneer’s command, had it? Not that long since he’d tried to bury her in snow and she’d buried _him_ in the record-winner biggest snowball in Briggs.

Now he was playing with the woman she loved.

Now, Olivier had been swept aside from the fun, destined to watch and care for those who still were allowed different things without them noticing.

She almost told them to come inside or at least patrol like disciplined soldiers, but she suddenly heard a voice by her side.

“Does this man never age?” asked Miles, looking at her with a mild smile, hand behind his back as he leaned to watch the two idiots in the fresh snow. It had been a while since it had snowed this beautifully, round and soft flakes that stuck to the ground without solidifying completely. Being down there right now must have been like standing on a cloud.

Olivier returned his smile and adopted his same posture.

“The answer appears to be ‘no’,” she only said.

Miles licked his lips for a moment, unsure of what to reply.

“This never gets old either.”

“As long as he’s here, it won’t.”

“That’s not much longer,” he had the terrible sense to say, and he seemed to realize it a pause after. “I’m sorry, I—have you found anything yet?”

To his surprise, she smiled again. It was a somewhat sad smile, though, but he didn’t comment on it. A smile from her always was reason for celebration.

“Actually,” Olivier said, eyes on the battle still ongoing down on the snow, “I’ve just signed the papers to acquire a little cottage a few miles west of here. It’s been abandoned for too long, and the owner was prepared to sell for far less than I’d expected.”

It had also come to a surprise for her when she’d found old documentation about the area. A cottage that size and that close to the border should have been property of Briggs long ago, if only for protective measures against any possible Drachman incursion on Amestrian soil. She had immediately rectified that by buying it as soon as she’d been able to, without Buccaneer’s permission, of course.

She figured she might as well give him no choice, just present him with everything once it was all already set so he couldn’t say no. Olivier wouldn’t have him living on the streets, not in this weather.

Miles made a noncommittal noise.

“You hadn’t mentioned anything.”

“I preferred not to trouble you with this,” she said with a sigh. Then, she looked up at him. “How far along are you with your task?”

“Well enough,” Miles said. “The list is suitably long now. I just left it on your desk.”

“Thank you,” she said.

And they both continued to watch the two idiots throw snow at each other as if they were children who had known each other a long time. In a way, they had. 

* * *

 

You could feel the ambiance hours before. The patrols had been pushed back a couple of hours so everyone could enjoy a longer dinner together that night, and the best meat for the week had been saved for the occasion. They would be eating scraps for the remainder of the month, but it mattered little when they had two more free hours to dine and a whole night to party. The only night a year they were allowed to do so, their only vacation in a life filled with work and duty.

Because the year was soon ending and a celebration was due.

And celebrate, they did. Slamming their hands on the table, the soldiers made rudimentary music for the lyrics they were singing at the top of their lungs as their public, an awe-struck Zinnia and a frowning Olivier, laughed from time to time at the ridiculousness of it all.

A song ended and another started a few seconds later, when a voice rose to affirm itself over all the other humming in the kitchens. This time, it was Buccaneer’s that stood out in its loudness, singing a song Olivier hadn’t heard in years. He had brought out the old repertoires again.

_For a long time we've been_

_Marching off to battle_

_In our thundering herd_

_We feel a lot like cattle_

_Like the pounding beat_

_Our aching feet aren't_

_Easy to ignore_

He stopped for a second or two to allow someone else to pick up after him, and they did gladly, singing the chorus whole-heartedly.

_Hey, think of instead_

_A girl worth fighting for_

_That's what I said_

_A girl worth fighting for_

Miles cheered as that stanza ended and Buccaneer looked about ready to keep on taking all the attention and sing whatever came next. Zinnia, too, clapped to the rhythm as Olivier judged silently, halfway between wishing she could sport this kind of behavior without feeling like an idiot.

_I want her paler than the_

_Moon with eyes that_

_Shine like stars_

_My girl will marvel at_

_My strength, adore my_

_Battle scars_

Buccaneer put his whole soul into the song, and his friends could all hear the longing in his voice that he’d fabricated to create a story that seemed so real it could grab at the hems of their shirts. He hadn’t been in love in too long, long before Briggs, and any old feelings he may have had had faded years and years ago, and he only ever recalled it during times like this.

Before silence could take over, Miles cleared his throat and lifted his voice to continue singing after Buccaneer.

_You were quite the charmer_

_And I'll bet the ladies love_

_A man in armor_

He elbowed Buccaneer after he’d finished, when everyone picked up the pace even louder than before:

_You can guess what we_

_Have missed the most_

_Since we went off to war_

_What do we want?_

_A girl worth fighting for_

This time Zinnia herself stood up, laughing like an idiot, and made up some words to fit into the overall song. It was silly and maybe not very inappropriate, but she deserved some silliness from time to time and god only knew she almost never had time for it.

_How 'bout a girl who's got a sword…_

She started, and suddenly her eyes opened wide and she blushed intensely.

_Wait, no, that can’t be in the song?_

Then they all laughed, too, because it was indeed silly and small but a perfect representation of her life right now, the life they’d all had access to for a little while now. They all began singing again, Buccaneer and Miles and Zinnia, and even Olivier. She joined them all as soon as they’d started, almost as if it were an hymn for this time of year. She never sang, but once wouldn’t hurt.

_What do we want?_

_A girl worth fighting for_

_Wish that I had_

_A girl worth fighting for_

_A girl worth fighting… for_

Olivier then turned to Zinnia, smirking: “A girl with a sword, huh?”

“My head was all blank, that was all I could think of.”

“I have a sword, all right,” Olivier said, touching the hilt of her sword to make a point.

“Oh, you thought I was singing about somebody else? I don’t know about you, but I know one girl with a sword, and that’s you, sir.”

“I figured, wonder why.”

They laughed and booped their noises together. Zinnia leaned her had against Olivier’s shoulder.

“The sword’s more elegant than an axe,” she said. “But I can definitely see you with an axe instead.”

“If only you’d seen me with a bazooka…”

“Shit…” Zinnia knew better than anyone how hard and fast she’d melt from the heat if she ever saw Olivier wielding such a weapon in her presence.

Olivier held her closer with one hand and poured her more hot broth with the other while the men continued to sing echoes of the song. Today the tables had all been put together in celebration and the food was served on the tables, not the counter as it was usual.

“Or in the tank. I’m sure you’d… like the tank.”

“Uh-huh.” And Zinnia was a goner already. She was really grateful she had never seen the tank in person because just imagining Olivier driving it would have been enough to send her round the bend. To make up for it, she said: “Do you think you can stomach a kiss in public, fearless ice queen?”

“I don’t see why not,” Olivier said. “They’re all fairly preoccupied with more singing.”

Zinnia unglued herself from Olivier a little to see what they were singing. She didn’t recognize this song either, but she could definitely relate to the feeling of being in love some of them were echoing, this time in a more crude and credible manner than Buccaneer’s dramatic take on it.

When she thought about it, these men worked 24/7 at Briggs, hardly ever leaving for missions. Some of them had families, wives, husbands, even children. They must have missed them around this time of the winter, when it was colder outside and almost the end of the year.

“If someone says anything, I’ll kill them…” Olivier promised right before going in for that kiss.

“I doubt it.”

And then they locked lips at last, and the men finished singing and started hooting, but when Olivier cracked an eye open she realized it was not at them but at the song that was over.

After that there came way more upbeat songs adorned by beer and chanting, noise and loudness, and men being happy together, even if they were far away from home. To some, home was this. Precisely this.

And they weren’t going to waste a second of it, when soon enough some would have to go out there again, to the bitter cold, to spy on Drachma in the distance once again.

It didn’t matter to them now. They knew to worry later when the party was over.

Olivier decided to do the same thing.

When the men began singing something slow and almost danceable, she stood up, offered Zinnia a hand and became young again, daring and bold, ready to do everything and care so little about how it turned out. Zinnia started giggling, so nervous, but Olivier just put her arms around her waist and soon Zinnia’s wrapped around her shoulders, and before any of them could notice, they were dancing slow to the gravely tones of the new song.

“A girl worth fighting for, huh?” Zinnia said in low voice.

“It was part of the song.”

“So you don’t really need one?”

“It’s easier to focus on your fight if someone you love isn’t in danger of succumbing to your defeat,” Olivier said. “So, yes, I can do without a girl to fight for.”

“A girl can also fight for herself.”

“Now, don’t get cocky. You have a lot to improve, muscles to build…”

“Not everyone can be as strong as you, Armstrong. Let the rest of us be mediocre.”

“In war? Quit dreaming.”

They danced in silence for a while longer.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Zinnia said with a huge smile on her face, looking at the room at large. “All of us, here, just enjoying the moment. And look at you, you’re dancing.”

“Once a year won’t kill me.”

“You should do this more,” Zinnia said, licking her lips. “Get out of you shell, I mean. Looks good on you.”

And it was true. Olivier’s face had shed its usual layers of worry and grumpiness. Tonight, she looked radiant, and not just looked it but felt it. There was something about being surrounded by her people, doing nothing but live, and celebrating.

She had never thought herself a person who was good at celebrations. Back in the day, she had mostly spent the balls at home drinking somewhere when people weren’t paying attention and looking at the rich women who walked back and forth in her living room, admiring the furniture, without even noticing her.

Even when she’d arrived north she hadn’t been a party person, preferring always to hide in the quietness of the library from the noisy men all around. But now she was neither that young filly her parents had wanted and failed to tame nor a new soldier in the fort. Now, she had made a name for herself and a reputation she could afford to blur a little on nights like these.

“Thank you,” Olivier said simply. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“The year is ending soon,” Zinnia said, sighing. “These moments, right before the end, are always so bittersweet, aren’t they? So full of regret and what ifs. I like that ours is like this, with handmade music and the humblest of companies. There’s no room for any of the dark stuff. I like that.”

“Write that down,” Olivier said with a smile. “Those are wise and beautiful words.”

“You’d keep them if I did,” Zinnia replied, twirling in her arms when Olivier gave her the cue to. “Pick them up when you needed to and otherwise forget about them. I want you to remember them, not turn to them.”

“Then…” Olivier said, leaning close to Zinnia’s neck, not giving half a shit about company and what not. Those men would suck it, whether they decided to look or not. This wasn’t any of their business. “Why write me so many paragraphs praising my talents, my beauty, my voice…? Did you not want me to remember those?”

Zinnia arched her neck and closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath.

“I harbored hopes of telling you directly one day,” she mumbled. “Still kind of do. And I will, if I’m ever brave enough.”

Olivier planted a soft last kiss on the base of Zinnia’s neck and then rose again to look her in the eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me. I already know.”

“Still,” Zinnia said. “One day I want to.”

And then the song and the mood of it all changed. They were singing something else now and Buccaneer had climbed atop the table with a jar of beer.

Olivier gave out a hearted chuckle and grabbed herself a jar as well.

“Want something?”

Zinnia shook her head.

They both sat back down on the bench, Zinnia on Olivier’s lap, and watched Buccaneer sing:

_Do what you want ’cause a pirate is free_ _,_

_You are a pirate!_

_Yar - Har - fiddle - dee-dee_

_being a pirate is all right with me!_

_do what you want ’cause a pirate is free_

_you are a pirate!_

Hours later, almost at dawn, when the last shift was finishing dinner, still echoing verses of all the songs that had stuck to their hearts, Zinnia was struggling to lift Olivier from the bench and take her upstairs.

“I’m fine…” Olivier complained in a mutter very improper of her.

“No, you’re not,” Zinnia replied, finally managing to get her to her feet and start walking supported on her.

When they were out of earshot, Zinnia allowed herself a brief remark:

“This is why I don’t drink, eh, Oli?”

“Oli?” Olivier chuckled at the nickname.

“I’m Flower Girl, you’re going to be Oli. _Drunk_ Oli.”

“My mother would kill you if she heard.” There was a giggle this time. When normal drunk, Olivier got even grumpier than normal and frowned almost constantly, but if she passed the limit she got very very drunk, giggly and cute—someone completely different than the woman Zinnia was used to.

“Your mother isn’t here,” Zinnia said, quickly turning to one soldier with rosy cheeks to say goodnight to him.

Olivier was silent for the two seconds it took Zinnia to call for the elevator. Then she looked at her as if she were the full moon, one of those entrancing mysteries man had always been drawn to.

“You’re so beautiful…”

Zinnia smiled and adjusted Olivier’s arm on her shoulder, trying to haul her up when they got in the elevator now.

“You’re too drunk to perceive beauty as it truly is.”

“However drunk I may be—” Olivier hiccupped. “Even so I’m _excellent_ at perceiving beauty. Yours kills me. D’you know that? Every time I look at you I—” She looked at Zinnia now. “Fuck. Fuck, Zinnia. I’m excellent at finding beauty, but terrible at processing it once it’s in front of me. I don’t deserve to have it in front of me.”

“It’s usually on top of you,” Zinnia said jokingly. The elevator’s doors opened a few seconds after. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

Olivier mumbled something incoherently as Zinnia made an effort to open the door with some dignity and get the two of them inside the room.

“Home, sweet home,” Zinnia said, slowly guiding Olivier towards the bed. She sat down, groaning, and Zinnia started undoing her buttons with the care of a mother, then took off her boots. “You sleep like this most nights, I guess one more won’t hurt.”

“No,” Olivier said, and her eyes were like fire right before she lunged right in to kiss Zinnia on the mouth. She was a fierce hurricane, drunk on many more things than just beer. Her breath was chaotic as well, but not enough to tick Zinnia off. She kissed her back gently, and just as gently pushed her away when Olivier’s hand started toying with the hem of her pants.

“Not tonight, general,” Zinnia said, taking off her own boots and jacket and changing into her sleepwear. Olivier watched, jaw dropped, from the edge of the bed. “Drunk as you are, it’s like making out with a wall.”

“I’m an excellent drunk. I mean, kisser. Drunk kisser, yes.” Another giggle.

Zinnia laughed softly as well.

“Get in,” she said. “I’ll cuddle you a little. If you promise not to yell at me tomorrow when you wake up with your head throbbing.”

“Headaches don’t make me yell,” Olivier pouted.

“Everything makes you yell, honey,” Zinnia said, wrapping an arm around her and closing her eyes, then slamming a hand on the switch to kill the lights. It was the first time she had ever called her ‘honey’ or anything similar. They usually didn’t go for the corny approach. “Happy holidays….”

She was almost drifting off to sleep when she heard Olivier’s slightly, very slightly more sobered up voice say:

“I love you…”

“Love you, too.” 

* * *

 

A lightning storm must have made its way into her head, and the constant lightning crashing against the walls of the her brain was what woke her, way before the light coming in from the window did, long before the alarm clock did.

She didn’t even sit up on the bed.

The real storm hadn’t gone anywhere. And neither had the list of things she needed to do today, if her pounding head didn’t stop her. It shouldn’t, neither broken bones nor the flu had been able to ever stop her on her tracks before.

Olivier groaned, holding her head in her hands. What the hell had happened that had rendered her so beat-up? What on earth had she done? She barely remembered last night as a night filled with song and booze, most of which she’d swallowed eagerly in an attempt to drown out her inability to enjoy the spirit of the ‘holidays’. They didn’t actually celebrate anything nor have days off in the fort, but being a week away from the end of another year always made people become the most festive version of themselves. Including her, apparently.

She hadn’t gotten that drunk in a long, long time.

So drunk her memories stopped at a slow dance and the murmur of louder and louder songs in the background after a while. She would have to ask around when she felt like a human being again. Right now, despite what she knew she should be on her feet to do, she closed her eyes, ignoring the hammering in her head and stomach, and tried to fall back asleep.

Her chest rose slowly as she tried to slow down her breathing, frown ever-present in her face. There was something wrong with her. A terrible wave of pain went right through her, and she opened her eyes wide, clutching the side of the mattress with one hand and leaning in to set loose the last few jars of beer she had downed not that long ago.

Looking at the mess, she panted and she didn’t feel any better.

“What’s happening?” Zinnia’s muffled voice asked. “Is it morning already?”

Olivier dropped herself back on the mattress.

“Yeah…” she said, her voice raspy from the effort and the exhaustion going right through her. She must have really drunk her fill last night, oh yes. What had she been thinking? “It’s morning.”

How early it was, that she didn’t know.

Zinnia sighed and rolled over, refusing to get up just now. Then she saw.

“Oh fuck…”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“I’m going to call the doctor, okay? Stay here.”

“Where would I go, huh?” Olivier said feebly.

“Knowing you,” Zinnia said, getting out of bed trying to avoid the big pool of liquid by the mattress, “to work.”

She got down as quickly as she could to the lower levels and fetched a sleeping doctor from his cot by the lab and brought him upstairs again as discreetly as possible. This wasn’t the kind of thing a doctor was needed for, but maybe Olivier could use a reprimand and a reminder that she wasn’t twenty anymore.

Zinnia also grabbed a few cleaning materials from one of the closets nearby and as the doctor examined a hung-over general she cleaned everything as best she could.

“Not much I can tell you,” the doctor was saying. “You know what you need to do: plenty of water and rest.”

Olivier scoffed.

“And a well-deserved warning to be careful with the drinking in future occasions. Nothing you don’t know, we’re all adults here.”

She thanked him anyway, despite clearly not liking his presence in her room, and as soon as he was gone she got up from the bed as Zinnia threw literal feet of wet paper into the bin.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, and _where_ are you going?” Zinnia said.

“I’ve a batch of men to send into your new route this morning.”

“You’ve also got to drink water and stay in bed, you’re sick.”

Olivier made a face.

“Okay, fine, you’re hungover. Same principles apply, you can’t show yourself like this. You’ll depress the men.”

Olivier tried to push past Zinnia, but she had to grab her shoulder all of a sudden not to fall when her stomach starting swirling again, no matter if it was empty this time. Zinnia, terrified out of her wits, grabbed Olivier’s wrist as if that could help.

“You’re not going anywhere like this,” she said, and her tone marked just how final that was. “I’ll get down if you want me to see them off, but you’re staying here.”

“Yes, mum…” Olivier said, sitting down again, rubbing both of her temples now that she didn’t need to cling to any steady support to stay upright.

“Don’t insult your mother like that,” Zinnia said. Then she changed into her uniform and tried to smile before she left. “I’ll be back right away. Want me to tell them anything?”

“Just that they should be careful.”

Zinnia did smile now. There went Olivier, feigning not to care and caring with an intensity that could blind.

“I will.” 

* * *

 

The forty men had left shortly after Zinnia had come down from her bedroom, bundled up for the cold, even though the day had dawned especially clear once again and there was close to no wind. Buccaneer had led them, proud and stoic, back into his element. Zinnia had waved at them as they’d left, in Olivier’s stead, and… for herself, too. These were her people now, and they were going out there to do something Zinnia had helped create, a project as hers as it was Buccaneer’s.

She should have been out there with them, seeing the border up close, every cave and every worn path and every star in the sky. But she understood she had little to no training to do so. If Drachma showed up when she was out there, she wouldn't have known what to do. She would have run, but Briggs men didn’t run.

She stayed by the open gate with a bunch of other soldiers, watching the tiny silhouettes of two batches of Mountain Men disappear into the horizon, until there was only snow to see. Then, the gate had been closed and everyone had gone back to their tasks.

Zinnia had returned upstairs to a woman who fidgeted more in bed than on that uncomfortable chair in her office. She hated standing still more than anyone else, it made Zinnia smile when she walked in the room again and saw Olivier fighting the covers.

“How did it go?” she asked, ceasing to struggle as if pretending she’d been this quiet all along.

“They left, not in much better shape than _you_ are,” Zinnia said, tipping Olivier’s chin affectionately. “But they’re fine, don’t worry about them. You’ve herded them well.”

“And now they’re sheep?” Olivier muttered, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath and tried to, finally, find the proper posture in the bed. Perhaps now that she was not alone it would be easier.

“More like you’re a shepherd…”

Olivier groaned, and Zinnia’s soul wrinkled in response. This was the first time she was seeing the general go through anything more serious than a work-induced headache, and she had no clue how to deal with it. She had a thirty-five year old woman in a bed at nine in the morning who normally was the first one to leave the room, a woman who in normal circumstances fought every single affliction until she could crush it in her arms.

Gently, Zinnia sat on the bed, trying not to make the motion too sudden and bother Olivier’s fragile head right now.

“Still in pain, aren’t you?” she said, reaching out to hold Olivier’s left hand.

“Last night was a bad idea,” Olivier muttered. “I’m banning it next year.”

“You need to _not_ drink next year...” Zinnia mumbled under her breath.

If Olivier heard it, Zinnia had no idea, because the subject was dodged completely.

“Get in with me…” Olivier pleaded.

“I need to get ready for work,” Zinnia said … while pushing the covers back to get in. She couldn’t resist the tiny tug at her sleeve that pulled her in, she followed it like a red line of fate.

“I see, yeah…”

But Zinnia glared stiffly at her and she shut up immediately.

“You don’t need to drink to have fun,” Zinnia said. In her world, drinks were very occasional and never a coping mechanism. They were taken in celebration or sorrow, but in moderation, and never alone. Olivier, although she’d been drinking during a celebration and surrounded by friends, had still drunk as if she was alone. And it had been a long time since she had been.

And, of course, to her the circumstances were different.

“That’s kind of the point of drinking, Zinnia. Without that, I’m still me.”

And the echo of that took a few seconds to sink in completely. _Does she mean that without booze she’s someone no one can love?_ When she was one of the best loved people in the fort, one of the most respected ones, and above all… the one they all looked to. The role she played was the role they all lived by.

“Well,” Zinnia said, “Some of us like you. And I like you better when you’re not… like this.”

“I’ll be fine by tonight.”

Zinnia giggled. That much, at least, was true. Give her a few hours and the sickness would have passed and she could go back to barking orders and being grumpy.

“You’ll never be fine, Armstrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References used this time: [You’re a pirate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY), from Lazytown & Mulan’s famous [A Girl Worth Fighting For](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3BPym3Or3w). There’s a whole section of my Adversity playlist that’s just Briggs songs and that one is definitely one of them. I always had this headcanon that every straight man on Briggs gets together sometimes to sing that song.
> 
> On a separate issue, sometimes I get really sad that I didn't post the chapters as soon as I finished them, because now I realize how cool it would have been to read about December while being in December, but oh well... Just know that it was an amazing experience for me to be writing about the same times of the year I was living, a part of my soul has been inevitably embedded on this story.
> 
> And, in case anyone's curious, I made a little [edit](https://twitter.com/fic_flower/status/1124063476517875713)of the magnolia pic of Ianthe and Olivier.


	41. Five days and one half of me

There were three knocks on their door, and after a few seconds without an answer, the door opened and the light was turned on. It woke Olivier immediately, the same way the first sun rays of dawn did, only this time it was artificial light that hit her eyes to reveal a soldier standing in the entrance to the room.

“General, sir,” the soldier said. “The Flower Route men are back.”

“Already?” Olivier said, rubbing her eyes. She hadn’t registered it yet, what it meant for them to be back so soon. When she did, her hand tightened on the mattress and she gripped it as though it were a piece of wood to destroy in order to prove her strength. “What happened? Is the captain alive?”

Buccaneer… The first image that had popped into her head after that ‘already’ had been blood. Dark oozing blood slipping out of Buccaneer’s right shoulder socket as he stood in the snow, a puff of breath leaving his mouth. He had kept walking back in the cold, missing an arm and having only stopped the bleeding to a certain extent.

_Not again,_ she thought. _Please, not again._

No one had died under her rule, but people had lost limbs. And she remembered, clear as day, the lives the war had zealously taken away. At least the only thing it had ever taken from Buccaneer had been his arm… until now, when it might have taken something else. Something precious to all of them.

The soldier hurried to assure her nothing of the sort had happened.

“He’s okay, sir,” he said. “They’re all safe. But you need to come down at once.”

Zinnia chose that moment to open her eyes as well, moaning in complaint because of the early hour.

“What’s going on? What time is it?” she muttered, yawning as she sat up and stretched her arms upwards.

“Around 4 am”.

“Soldier,” Olivier said, “wait for me outside.” She slithered out of bed as if her entire body hurt to move and shooed the soldier away so she could get dressed. She stood at the drawer and dragged out the first thing she saw. She wasn’t sure it was even proper attire for this meeting, but she didn’t care. She was already late for it.

Shortly after, Zinnia tried to follow, tripping over her own boots by the bed because she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Olivier stared at her for a moment. She looked like a child that has been asked to stay awake past their bedtime without having been explained why.

“Where do you think you’re going, flower girl?”

“Coming down with you,” Zinnia said, as if it were obvious.

She, too, got one of her comfortable dresses out of the drawer.

“This is an official matter,” Olivier said gently. She didn’t know how she was channeling the necessary energy to be soft. Deep down, she had a giant warning alert pulsing along with her heart, and knowing it would never go away until the war was over only made it pulse harder. She swallowed bile. “I’ll handle it. You need sleep”

“If something’s happened, I want to be there.” _For you,_ Zinnia thought but didn’t add out loud. Getting news at this hour couldn’t mean anything good, and whatever it was Zinnia was scared for Olivier.

“Please. I’ll wake you when I’m back, but please… don’t argue now.”

The word ‘please’ struck Zinnia in the chest like a blow from a hammer and she was rendered speechless. Something truly terrible must be happening for Olivier to want to do it alone, to keep her feelings to herself, and protect Zinnia from a truth she’d end up finding out about anyway.

But if Olivier wanted to go alone, what could she do? She wasn’t a fixed part of this place as much as she’d been made to believe she could be. At the end of the day, she was still a visitor who would one day leave, sooner or later. And visitors didn’t get involved in official military matters. That was the rule.

“Fine…” Zinnia muttered at last, dropping the dress back inside the drawer and going to sit on the bed again. She desperately craved to get back in and close her eyes, but it could still wait a couple of minutes. “Be careful”

“It’s okay, there’s nothing to be careful about.” Olivier said, not believing it. “It’s all going to be okay…”

And yet those words betrayed the meaning she’d hoped to attach to them.

“I hope so,” Zinnia replied.

Olivier leaned in to kiss Zinnia’s forehead.

“Don’t wait up.”

As soon as she left, something snapped shut inside her. She had to cage her feelings or they would escape and this would turn into an emotional battlefield sooner than it had to be a real one.

The fact that all of her men were safe and sound was the only thing that comforted her on the way down to the lower levels of the fort. If anything had happened to any of them… she didn’t think she could forgive herself. Sending those batches into the wild had been her idea, to prevent unwanted advances, and whatever happened during would always be her responsibility.

Her heart pounded against her sternum when she spotted them a fair distance from the stairs she was just finished descending. Twenty men huddled up, still in their snow uniforms, waiting for her.

Safe and sound, but at what cost?

When she came closer, she saw it in their faces, the effort of walking non-stop for miles in the terrible mountain weather to bring back the news. Whatever news they had brought with them.

“General,” Buccaneer saluted her.

He looked like shit, and that was only the best of several stages of shittiness in each and every of their faces, as if they’d collectively battled a giant beast in the snow. She felt a surge of tears swell up in her throat and cleared them away. She couldn’t cry in front of them.

“What happened?” Olivier just asked.

“They’re arming the border,” Buccaneer told her, his cheerfulness all gone from both his face and his voice. For the first time in a long time, she witnessed the damage all those six decades had left on his skin and demeanor, and she missed the Buccaneer in jest they had all come to love. “There’s men patrolling, holding long-range weapons. And a safe house. We’ve seen them mimic our uniforms for the snow, too. It’s not confirmed yet but it looks as if they planned to set an incursion on our territory soon. It’s not the first time they pool at the border, but it also doesn’t look like it’ll be the last if we don’t stop them.”

“How many?” Olivier asked, raising her eyebrow. One of the reasons why these twenty men had returned from their inaugural mission had to be because of the numbers. Otherwise, they would have fought, or stayed there longer to amass some more information to bring her, although for the short amount of time they’d spied on Drachma they had brought plenty of intelligence on them.

Buccaneer didn’t look too confident about the question and its answer.

“We believe around five hundred.”

“FIVE HUNDRED???”

“We couldn’t come close, sir,” another one said, next to Buccaneer, trembling a little from the cold. “They might have spotted us on their side of the border. It would have been carnage.”

_Maybe it should have been, maybe the war should have started now._

“There has never been that many Drachman in the border since the last war. This is a declaration of intentions,” Olivier said. “And an advantage to us, if we can figure out something more precise than them wanting an incursion.”

“What’s the course of action to follow, then, sir?” Buccaneer said.

“Get some rest. It must have been a difficult journey back. Tomorrow I’ll group more men, we’ll go pay Drachma a little visit.”

“But…” someone else commented. A young soldier, his youth apparent in his face and words. Olivier’s heart hurt just by thinking she was sending boys to what could very soon turn into a war. “With all due respect, sir, we’re outnumbered.”

Olivier nodded solemnly. “We’re also better equipped. Three hundred of us can take five hundred of them. And we have a fort to survive a siege in, they don’t.”

“Not in open battle, we won’t be better equipped,” Buccaneer said. “Out there it’s a few of us against an _army_ of them.”

“The point is stopping that army before it moves in on the fort. Or at least spy on them long enough to know what’s coming and when. Now that they’re here we can’t ignore their presence, we need to get ready.” Her stomach sank to the deepest pits of her. War was here, at long last, then why did she not feel excited about it? She’d been craving the culmination of peace for years, the final touch of war to crown her career.

Now she had more to lose. She had plenty to lose in battle, and plenty to leave behind. And the thought of that terrified her. But she was still major general, and she still had an army to commandeer out into the depths of the snow to meet their enemy. Whenever, wherever, she could and didn’t want to say no. But she still felt the need to turn her head back and look at what was at stake.

“Wake Miles,” Olivier ordered. “And do get some rest.”

Only one man got up to fetch Miles. The rest stayed, stubborn.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“We’re not staying behind. We’re the only ones who know where the Drachman are located.”

She decided not to reply saying that she could follow a map to them.

“No, you’re not staying behind.” She agreed that much was true, at least. “But I can’t allow you to go back there without getting any sleep first. It will be a long walk until we reach them.”

“Still”, someone said, “we’d rather wait here.”

She kept asking them questions about the location and any detail that might have slipped their minds until Miles showed up, tired to an extreme that wasn’t human, with his material and ready to work.

“General,” he said.

“We’ve a situation with Drachma,” Olivier said, glaring at the other soldiers so they would leave them alone. “I need you to draft me a list of a hundred men to take to the mountains, not counting these twenty. And to prepare the schedule for the next week for the remainder almost two hundred. Can you do that?”

He looked at her, confused for a second. “Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.” she told them, then finally turned to address the others. “The rest of you, I order you to go to your bunks and try to get some sleep. We’ll leave after dawn.”

“We?” Buccaneer asked.

“If it comes to battle, Drachma won’t be expecting me to lead you outside the fort.”

“The _fort_ needs you as well, sir.”

“The fort will be well-defended, fear not. None of you _need_ me either. I’m going because I need to be present to know what we’re facing. Now go.”

With a collective sigh, they started leaving in tiny group for the elevator until, finally, Miles and Olivier were left alone to work against the clock to make this possible.

They headed for the kitchen and their benches, sitting at one and spreading all of Miles’ materials on the table so they could both be aware of what the numbers were and could be.

“You should stay, Olivier,” he dared to say as they went over possible candidates for the next day’s trip. “You’re the heart of Briggs.”

“Hearts have two halves.”

Miles deliberately put a hand to the paper she was reading to make her look up at him. His eyes were baggy and his expression hunched and worn, but she didn’t look any better. She looked like a war ghost, and perhaps she had been in a way since the first conflict against the Drachman, and they had all been too blinded by her resolve and her anger to notice how translucent she’d become as of late.

“You can’t sever yourself in half to be with both groups,” Miles said softly, looking into her blue eyes.

She didn’t grace him with an answer. Of course she couldn’t be in two places at once, no matter how much she might want to. But things being what they were, if she could just see Drachma in action for a minute, they might eventually be able to use whatever information she’d inferred from it to come out on top. And yet her heart would remain on the fort, hidden beneath blankets and curtains and cushions. Her heart, and he knew, would definitely be torn in two—one half with the men at the mountain, the physical half; one half back in her home with who she loved.

“And what about Zinnia?” he asked again.

“What about her?”

“She’ll be staying behind.” It wasn’t a question. “She’ll be safe here.”

“Until war breaks out,” Miles said.

“Until war breaks out,” Olivier confirmed. “But we will already be back for that, and I will have sent her away by then.”

Miles sobered but said nothing. A civilian in the midst of war was not a good thing, not at all.

They worked in silence until right before dawn, pushing past their own limits to stay awake. In the end, they managed to list enough people to march right this morning, if they could get them all to wake up early. They had chosen as wisely as they’d been able to, taking into account current shifts and permanence in the fort. Olivier still wasn’t going to send children of Central to fight the battles that Briggs men had for years. Not only because it wasn’t fair to those that carried war in their hearts but because she feared the north would finish their lives before they were aware of what they’d gotten into.

Miles had been appointed to go as well. Olivier trusted him more than anyone else in the fort. He was diligent and quiet, working out of tenacity and duty, and she would need that if things got rough out there. She felt sorry for him, because he hadn’t slept much that night, but she’d be sure to not let him take first watch later today when they were in the snow.

She gave the list of men to the first soldier who entered the kitchen for an early breakfast and ordered him to wake up and gather up everyone on it. She couldn’t do that, she had something else to do.

Quick as she could, given that she had been awake since four am, Olivier went up the stairs to her bedroom. She didn’t know if Zinnia was up already, or if she’d slept at all. If she knew something, it was that Zinnia could be just as stubborn as she was.

To her surprise, Olivier found her hugging a pillow, all huddled up under the blankets, fast asleep—a different posture than usual, clearly noticing the empty space in the bed. It broke Olivier’s heart to wake her, but she had made her a promise, and she intended to stay true to it.

Softly, Olivier shook her awake.

When she opened her eyes, Olivier forced her tears back inside. She hadn’t cried downstairs and she sure as hell was not crying now. She wouldn’t know how. She wanted to, though, when she saw in Zinnia’s gaze that the girl had tried to stay up and wait but had succumbed to sleep.

“Zinnia…” she said, almost telling her off.

But Zinnia blinked, sleepy like a princess in a fairytale right after her prince has kissed her awake, and Olivier couldn’t say anything.

“You’re … back,” Zinnia murmured, astonished.

“I …” Olivier said, unable to look her in the eye any longer, not while she said these words because she knew how much they would disappoint Zinnia: “I need to leave again.”

“What?” Zinnia tried to wake up completely, but her head was still cloudy with sleep.

“The men have found an army of Drachman at the border,” Olivier told her softly. “We’re going out there to investigate it.”

“But it’s dangerous.”

“Life is danger, kid,” Olivier said. “And protecting this fort from it is my job.”

“You’re leaving now?”

Olivier nodded, still looking down.

“An hour or so from now,” she replied.

“You haven’t slept…”

“There’s no time for that now. I need to go.”

She got up from the floor where she had kneelt, but Zinnia grabbed her hand and pierced her eyes with hers. Olivier was frozen in place. She couldn’t escape her eyes, and she’d known before going in.

“Don’t go. What if something happens to you?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Olivier said softly. “I’m the Northern Wall of Briggs…”

For some reason, right now it hadn’t sounded as fierce and convincing as it usually did. What did it matter to Zinnia if she was in love with a woman they called a wall? She was still just another human, victim to time and cruelty just as everybody else.

“You’re also a woman made of flesh and bone. You _can_ be killed, you’re not made of ice and steel. You’re not a wall,” Zinnia said, her anger true yet soft like a child’s in comparison to an adult’s.

“Just…” Olivier said, unsure of how to word this credibly, as she cupped Zinnia’s face in her hand. She passed her thumb distractedly over Zinnia’s cheekbones. “Keep an eye on the horizon for me, will you? I won’t be gone for long. Give me five days and you will see me emerging from the horizon, walking back home to you.”

“To me…” Zinnia repeated in a mutter.

“Five days,” Olivier promised. “And I will be back here. Count on it.”

Zinnia wanted to say that Olivier would be missing out on the end of the year, on everything they had planned to do among their family of soldiers, but she bit her lip and didn’t bring it up. She was too tired to think properly. She just knew her love was leaving her, and perhaps never to return.

Even in this state Zinnia knew Olivier was walking into a war she might not be able to walk out of any time soon.

“Five days,” she only said. “You promised me five days. Remember that.”

“I promised.”

Then Olivier leaned towards her a little, her lips full of more promises she wanted to keep but didn’t know if she’d be able to.

_One half of me stays here with you,_ she thought. But she could never voice that. Zinnia wouldn’t be living it as true, Zinnia would be alone again in a place that had never truly become her own, missing her. And Olivier couldn’t do that to her. Not like this, not now.

Slowly, she neared closer and closer to Zinnia’s mouth.

So little, thin-lipped, and yet it held the universe.

Olivier reached out to take it and kissed her, because she could never say goodbye, she could never mean it, she could never get past the fear of never being back.

She knew she might never be back.

But she couldn’t let that show.

If it did, Zinnia said nothing. If she shared this fear with Olivier, Zinnia swallowed it and, as per usual, just gave Olivier the universe through that kiss.

“Don’t miss me,” Olivier said, once they’d separated a little. The sun was up, she had to go.

“I’ll try.”

Zinnia smiled, despite how much it cost her to. Olivier hadn’t slept and was going out there exhausted and, to some extent, scared, and that was a terrible combination when facing the enemy. Zinnia smiled because she wanted Olivier to at least have some motivation, some love to cling to if things got tough.

_When you go, one half of me goes with you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the chapter being on the short side. but I think that the general mood of it makes up for the lack of more words ^^ This is actually one of my favorite chapters, maybe because of the title.
> 
> I hope you're having a nice week :3


	42. When you're gone

The cold had greeted her like an old friend she hadn’t visited in too long. When had it been the last time since she’d gone outside? She had awaited this moment for longer than she could even recall, and yet the cold’s welcome didn’t sit well in her heart. Something was wrong, the timing was wrong, it was too soon. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. She’d always known war was coming, she’d always waited for it, but not now. Now, it was not a good time for her.

And yet she kept marching forward, feet crushing the snow in her path, a long line of men following her into the mountains. She couldn’t have said why, but soon her pace slowed down enough to start being left behind by more and more men, and when she was relegated to the side of the line, she looked back at the wall clouded in white.

Everything was so tranquil, almost ethereally so, that she couldn’t have said, if she hadn’t known, that peace was over for Fort Briggs. There were no men atop the wall, keeping the cannons some company, but if Olivier closed her eyes, she could almost feel the contrary. She could pinpoint the silhouette of a woman against the wind, seeing them off. Olivier knew it wasn’t real, that Zinnia was still tucked in bed, even if she wanted with all her heart to believe she was there, watching over her despite the early hour.

And Olivier really did hope this wouldn’t be the last time she would see Zinnia. She really hoped this wouldn’t turn out to be a proper war, because like Zinnia herself had said, Olivier was not made of ice and steel. And if Drachma invaded right before their eyes, after having taken the lives of the soldiers beside her, Olivier would have no choice but to watch the enemy take over the fort and Zinnia with them. Perhaps she should’ve told the flower girl to go away for a while, to hide with her bookstore friend in North City. _Still too far up north…_ Olivier thought now. Besides, there was no turning back now. What was done was done, and now Olivier just had to keep marching on and win this thing.

She really did have to come out on top now. She couldn’t let anything happen to Zinnia.

Longingly, Olivier locked eyes for a final time with the edge of her wall, stared for a few seconds, then exhaled and turned back to the path that lead into the mountain range.

Contrary to what she’d believed, Zinnia was, in fact, leaning towards a window upstairs with some other soldiers, watching their friends and colleagues leave. They had all seen Miles’ announcement on the board about the new double shifts while the situation remained the same to make up for the men who had left, and instead of having gathered to complain about the changes, the men had sat by the windows and watched, surly, the changes become real and closer as their friends grew more and more distant.

Zinnia had sat with Austin and a few others in silence. No one really knew what to say about this, it had been so sudden. Fear had already seeped into their heads, tormenting them with unpleasant images of the past and of those stories Buccaneer had always been telling them about war and loss.

As if he’d been reading Zinnia’s mind, Austin interrupted the silence.

“They’ll be alright,” Austin said. “Buccaneer was always saying that Drachma isn’t prepared to cross the range and meet us in an open field, we have weapons they don’t this time. Our men will be able to win this war like we won the last one.”

_Too optimistic_ , she thought. _Much too optimistic_. He was new here, regardless of how long he’d worked north. The inner workings of the fort were a mystery to anyone who hadn’t seen the soldiers at it for years, and neither of them had. All Zinnia knew was that on the other side of the mountains there was a nation strong enough to declare war on them any day and strong enough that there had had to be an Amestrian fort built in order to have someone stop them at the border. She didn’t really think Briggs men idiots nor incapable warmongers. Buccaneer had lost his arm in the previous war, and she’d known for a while that people had died where he hadn’t, or Briggs wouldn’t have a cemetery with old gravestones in it.

Difference between then and now was that Drachma had had time to prepare better for battle this time. So had Briggs, but Briggs was a much smaller power than an entire country’s army. They should have called for reinforcements before they’d ventured into the wilderness alone. Zinnia should’ve thought of that. She should’ve given ideas instead of insisting like a child that she wanted to accompany them. Now a big chunk of her people were alone against a superpower, and Zinnia was warm and safe inside the fort, watching them become specs in the distance.

She felt a shudder down her spine, regardless of the temperature.

“It’s not war yet,” Zinnia said softly. _And that’s exactly what worries me._ One day it would be, and when that day came she wouldn’t have the necessary mental tools to reassure herself that Briggs could still win it.

Austin tried to assuage her more than once, perhaps feeling responsible for her loneliness and like he had to take care of her now that all her closest friends had left the fort, and she tried to let him without making it too clear she was bothered by it. She knew he meant well, but deep down the only thing she wanted was to hide somewhere and just wait these next five days about.

For the next seventy-two hours, they convened when it was lunch time or dinner time, mostly because otherwise they would’ve wound up on their own. Austin had eventually made some friends here but most were either on late patrols or with Olivier.

“You’re scared?” Austin asked politely the two nights after they’d left.

Zinnia sat uncomfortable on her seat. She’d been avoiding looking moody enough that he’d ask her that question, because she didn’t think she was capable of lying to him about it just for the sake of keeping hi mind clear of fear.

“Why would I be scared?”

“I don’t know. You look scared.”

And he stared. She tried to control how fast her heartbeat was so she wouldn’t look like she was scared.

“I’m pale because it’s cold, and because the food’s terrible.” She almost smiled at the realization that she’d said something that characterized every Briggs veteran, their loving hatred for the food. She was becoming one of them. “Doesn’t make me look very nice, no.”

“You do look nice,” Austin said before he could stop himself. Then he blushed when he became aware of how inappropriate that was.

“Thanks,” Zinnia said simply, with a smile.

“I meant—I didn’t mean it like—” He exhaled, trying to get his thoughts together. “It’s just been a while since I’ve seen … girls, you know?”

She laughed. “Not a lot of girls around here, true.”

“I wish there would be. I feel like I’m twelve ogling at you and General Armstrong.”

He realized he’d made it worse by including Olivier in that statement. Zinnia hadn’t looked bothered by the fact that Austin quenched his nostalgia towards girls by paying attention to Zinnia herself, but her face did fall at the mention of Olivier.

“Shit, sorry.”

“That’s okay, I guess,” she said, pensive. “I’m sorry it’s just me here now, she’s far prettier than I am.”

“She’s a different kind of pretty.” He grinned. “I’ve never met a man who didn’t love her and fear her at the same time.”

“You think I’m any different?” Zinnia laughed. “She scares the pants off of me.”

Now it was her turn to have said something completely unorthodox, even if she’d meant it as purely designation of how scary Olivier could be to her. She should not have mentioned pants, she should really not have.

“But you love her.”

Zinnia hadn’t expected to hear it from him, usually a bit coy and reluctant to say anything around the veterans. She’d known he was observant enough, and she knew by now that her relationship with their boss was no secret, but still… there was a line between being up to date with the gossip and getting to the heart of it with one look.

“I … suppose I do, yes.”

“You’re scared of her not coming back, aren’t you?” he pressed on.

She gave out a dry chuckle.

“What’s up with me being scared, Austin? Are you?”

“A little,” he admitted. “But I know it’s going to be okay. These guys are the best there are at what they do. Back at home,” he said, “we were threatened with having our superiors send us here because there are so many rumors about Briggs soldiers being the toughest out of all of us. They’re the main defense of our forces, just like Eastern Command is our strongest strength of attack. I knew, before coming here, these men would eat anyone alive, including me. That’s why I’m not really afraid, why you shouldn’t really be afraid. The general leads them. And there is no one as tough out there as she is”

“I’m not scared,” Zinnia lied. “I know what they’re capable of.”

“You are scared of them not coming back. Not of war, not of losing it, just… of her not coming back to you.”

_She promised me she would._ Zinnia stared at him for a few moments.

“And you want to soothe me or something? Am I missing out?”

Austin smiled and blushed again.

“I just want you to know that if you need to talk or something… I’m here.”

She patted his shoulder. “I know, Austin. Quit worrying about it. Our job now is to wait them out. And we can do that better than they could, alright?”

_Definitely_ , she thought. Zinnia tried to imagine Olivier being in her position. It was no secret that it most likely would have been almost impossible for Olivier to deal with all this, the waiting and the not knowing what was going on. Zinnia should feel lucky, after all, that it was this way and not the other way around. She almost managed a smile as she watched Austin’s expression.

Perhaps he was even more afraid for them than she was for Olivier. 

* * *

 

_For a long time we've been_

_Marching off to battle_

_In our thundering herd_

_We feel a lot like cattle_

_Like the pounding beat_

_Our aching feet aren't_

_Easy to ignore_

_Hey, think of instead_

_A girl worth fighting for_

The men echoed some stanzas of a song as they climbed. With the dawn, they had set on their course again. Mostly, they’d been silent, probably too sleepy yet to begin talking or to even complain about the cold and the lack of proper sleeping conditions. But within the hour Olivier had witnessed them come alive again, singing in muffled tones to pass the time.

Even now, at the back of the line, she could hear them sing. She wasn’t going to stop them, if it made this more bearable for them. She doubted, though, there was anything that might make this more bearable

“We should be stopping soon.” Miles said on her left. He’d fallen behind a few minutes ago to walk alongside her and had stayed when he’d seen she wasn’t about to shoo him away like she had with Buccaneer a day before.

Olivier looked before her at the men walking energetically and shook her head.

“There is no need to. There won’t be for hours.”

Miles guessed what she was thinking.

“They might not be tired, but you are.” he said. “We all got some hours of sleep. You didn’t.”

The previous night, as the one before it, she had insisted on keeping watch, tired and done as she was, because she needed them all alert and she needed time and space to think about what this could mean. The heart of war beat strong in her chest, but she also feared it. Olivier had never feared war, not once, not when she’d been close to dying in it, when that shrapnel had reached her temple and scarred her for life.

She feared this war with all her heart and soul, and she feared it in silence, because if her people found out how terrified she was of walking to meet the Drachman in a last battle, they would look at her and wouldn’t recognize her. General Armstrong was always thirsty for the blood she had helped not to spill fifteen years ago, not this feet-dragging mess who had fallen behind in formation, walking last alongside by Miles.

If they had known, if they’d even suspected she was scared of this war because of what it might strip away from her… what she had left behind to protect, then she wouldn’t be able to look into any of their eyes. She would only be able to stand there and endure their quiet judgment. And she would deserve that judgment.

“We’re not stopping so I can take a _nap._ ” she said in the end. They wouldn’t stop until it was night and the cold made it unbearable to continue. Drachma was only some miles north, not that far away from them. They needed to be careful, and they needed the advantage of daylight.

“Perhaps we should. You won’t be at your best unless you sleep.”

She growled at him but knew he was right. If a fight came to be, she wouldn’t be able to do much more than just stubbornly keep fighting, not because she could but because she was unable to allow herself to stop, no matter how much she longed for rest. She needed it, she realized now. She needed to be useful.

“A few more miles,” she only said in the end, eyes forward. “Then we will stop.”

Her expression promised it to him. He nodded and left her alone for a few miles more, as she’d said. He saw that fear she strove to keep hidden, and he looked up at the clouds above and prayed so that she should never succumb to it. They needed her. Briggs may have been able to function in her absence, but her loss—both physical and figurative—would wreck them from the inside out. Olivier truly was their heart, she had always been, and she would always be, no matter who she loved or what she feared.

Miles knew, better than anyone. Miles would have given his life for her. He didn’t know a man on her fort that wouldn’t. 

* * *

 

Tonight they drank but didn’t sing, because deep down they were worried, even if they tried very hard not to look it. Looking worried was among the many things they all were trying not to do while the boss was gone, and so far they were doing well. For the last day of the year, they were doing an excellent job at it.

Again, Austin and Zinnia had gathered, each other’s one go-to when the rest of their people weren’t here to spend the night, and they sat alone in a corner of the kitchens, waiting for the clock to strike twelve.

It had already been a few days since everybody had left, yet still not five, and Zinnia knew she couldn’t start to freak out yet. Olivier’s promise had always been a two-way promise: on the one hand, that Olivier would be back before that time was other, and on the other than Zinnia wouldn’t lose her mind before either. Even so, even if the time was not yet up, Zinnia felt like a claw had taken over her heart and she couldn’t move.

“It’s been a good year,” Austin said after a while of sitting in silence, “hasn’t it?”

“What?” She hadn’t been listening.

“I mean, good things have happened, I guess. That makes the year better than bad.”

She giggled a little.

“I thought they’d sent you here to punish you.”

“Didn’t turn out favorably to them. This _is_ nice. Nicer than it seemed at first…” He smiled. “Took a little getting used to.”

Zinnia snorted, although she had to admit that that last part was so true. “I wouldn’t have gone for ‘nice’, but okay.” In a way, Briggs was nicer than other places she had been. Maybe not as colorful and diverse, but it was still full of life and energy, and she needed that sometimes. And despite the men not having accepted her at first, she had no complaints about the current moment she was living. They had always, after those first weeks, been supportive of Zinnia’s stay in the fort and what it ultimately meant. She sighed. “It feels much longer than just a year, though. And it’s barely even been twelve months since I came north.”

“You’ve been a good addition to this place.”

“Yeah?” She laughed a little. “I couldn’t have said, at least at the beginning.”

“It was a bad idea to put you in the kitchens. Not your fault, though.”

“It was a lousy start, but I’m glad we all grew over it.”

“I think people just needed to see that you weren’t in charge. That… there were rules you were following to the letter to stay here.”

“Still, me being here has always been weird enough, it’s okay that people didn’t know what to think of me. At least now that’s done.”

“Yeah, people love you now.”

“But I’m not one of you,” she said, perplex. “I’m not a soldier.”

“You don’t need to be. You’re family now.”

Then…. the clock struck twelve and people slowly clanked their jars in silence. It was such a quiet moment, that Zinnia thought it felt like defeat in a way. This should have been loud, this should have been full of noise and songs and people, and instead over one third of the fort’s population was gone.

Austin looked at Zinnia. They didn’t really need to speak to settle on it all being very defeatist of Briggs men. “Happy 1915, I guess”

“Yeah… Happy new year.”

She couldn’t help but wonder where Olivier would be now, if they were somewhere safe from the snow and the enemy, somewhere warm. There wasn’t a big enough cave for them all, not with all their numbers, but Zinnia had hope that they’d found somewhere to sleep.

Would they be celebrating as well? On rations and melted snow?

Or would they have gone to bed early, readying themselves for another day of walking forth without stopping?

Zinnia didn’t know where they were, and that made her feel as if her stomach was eating itself. She had no way to know if they were okay, if they had reached their destination yet. And even though Austin insisted on keeping her—and himself—entertained enough to not think about any of it, the thought that she was separated from them still hurt, even if she was paying attention to something else.

Deep down, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she kept being reminded of what Olivier had gone north to do. Briggs was declaring war on Drachma, sooner than later, or perhaps the other way around, but it was a reality that would eventually reach the fort. When they did, the current inhabitants of it had no way to know when it had happened and who had fallen to make that happen.

Some might never be coming back at all, and beyond Zinnia’s own comprehension, she worried about how a certain loss would feel even if she hadn’t lost it yet. If Olivier fell, if Drachma got through to her, Zinnia wouldn’t know until the men came back. And that made her stomach churn undescriptively hard.

She could picture it only to a certain extent, if she took it any further, she needed to shake her head and focus on something else for a while. Losing Olivier would be like stripping the planet of one of its seasons. Losing Olivier would be like losing winter.

_Winters are beautiful here_ , she had said once, not that long ago. Zinnia hadn’t believed it, it had been winter that had forced her to take refuge in Briggs, but she did now. And now that winter was here to stay, she was alone and its beauty didn’t reach her because of that loneliness. Beauty in the right company could grow to become ecstatic, and now that of the winter was deemed cold and cruel by Zinnia because Olivier wasn’t there by her side to either watch the snow with her or warm their bed at night to share it with her.

* * *

 

That night they had been too tired to look much further, but the first cave they had found had been too small, barely wide enough for twenty men, let alone for a hundred and twenty, and Olivier had taken one good look at the inside of the cave and shook her head. They needed to keep going, she wasn’t about to let a hundred of her people sleep in the snow with this disagreeable wind that had risen up in the past hour.

Luckily, after a long while, already dragging their feet on the snow, they had found a big enough cave to rest in, still a few miles away from the Drachman settlement. They had plopped in, built fires as best they could, illuminating the depths of the cave, and prepared for the night. At least now that they had shelter they wouldn’t need to worry excessively about the cold.

The food, on the contrary, was a different matter. They couldn’t make a big feast like they would have if they’d been at the fort, but they had at least something to eat by the fire.

It was the last night of the year and they would be spending it alone in the middle of nowhere, surviving on rations and appropriate clothes. Olivier knew these men would miss the noise of a party, but out there they couldn’t make any noise that would alert a passer-by of their presence. They needed to do this incognito.

“General?” Miles called.

She turned around from the entrance of the cave, and he saw the bags under her eyes from the distance.

“Get in, we’re about to eat.”

“I’m coming, yes,” she said, turning back to the wind and the snow and the barren lands before her. She sat back down on the dry ground of the cave, near the barricade they’d build by the entrance so all the storms that rose at night didn’t seep indoors.

For all these days, all she’d been able to do was fall back in the formations and walk alone, looking back at the sights she was leaving behind. Briggs was already invisible behind them, but she kept looking back, over and over, as if she hoped to see its little lights at night. Even at day, her soldiers had surprised her with her body turned back. No one had said anything, but she had seen it in Miles eyes, how they all understood. She didn’t want them to.

She wanted to be the only one who missed someone, because at least that way she could be sure no one else had their heads in the clouds.

As she looked at the snow falling, she thought back to Zinnia and what she would be doing in the fort, if she was celebrating as it was tradition or she was in bed already, missing the company.

In these few days Olivier had been marching in the mountains, the thing she had missed the most aside from that company had been Zinnia’s body next to her at night. She hadn’t been able to sleep much during the hours she didn’t have watch. Despite what Miles had told her, she preferred to be always on watch, so she could let the rest of them sleep.

That night after a frugal dinner, though, one look from him was enough to have her move back to the inside of the cave to where she’d left her things. She set up a cot to sleep in and something to cover herself and lay down as she heard the conversations around her and at the front of the cave.

She tried to close her eyes and concentrate. Sleeping didn’t have to be hard, she didn’t have to fight it… And still she did.

She was alone, and she’d never known how to fall asleep alone.

In the end, after a few hours in which silence finally reached most parts of the cave, she managed to conjure the right image: that of Zinnia and her body heat right by her side.

And she fell asleep. 

* * *

 

They truly were the enemy. The way they’d set up camp, as if they owned the border, made Olivier’s blood boil. Briggs men were watching from a hill not far from there, still as trees in a windless day, and waiting for the perfect moment to get closer without being seen. They needed to get their hands on information, and little information they would get sitting in the now out of earshot.

For now, none of them was looking forward at the Drachman camp, but at their leader and Miles, who were both arguing about who should be the scapegoat that got to spy on the enemy.

“You’re recognizable, it should be me,” he was saying.

“And you’re not expendable, Miles,” she said in return. “I can’t lose you to these people. I’ll go.”

“I’d honestly prefer for them to catch me than for them to catch you.”

“Thankfully you’re not the one that gets to decide that sort of thing.”

“General, listen to reason. If you go, it will be immediate. They know your face already. They could probably pick you out of a crowd.”

“I don’t care. I’m not putting any more lives in danger.”

“Except your own, right?” said Buccaneer soullessly from a corner, sitting down on his luggage.

“This is not about me,” Olivier said angrily. “I need you to trust me with this, and to trust I will do it quickly and wisely enough that they won’t catch me. And if they do, I will need you to continue with this operation—without planning any rescues—and preparing for whatever is coming. Are we clear on that?”

“We’re over one hundred men. If you think we’re just going to—”

“You are,” she stated clearly. “Because I’m ordering you to.”

“Then I will opt for insubordination.”

Olivier grunted.

“We are in the middle of nowhere, and if you put me in a position that I have to go back to the fort to write the papers to get you a nice little cell somewhere, I will.”

“It would keep you out of that camp,” Miles said calmly.

She grunted again, louder.

“What makes you think you would infiltrate them more easily?”

“The fact that I’m not the one in charge of three hundred men and a fort. I’m invisible, Olivier,” he said, echoing a conversation they’d had years ago.

They’d been in her office, and he’d already been in Briggs for quite some time, and she’d made an observation he had never forgotten:

“Do you want to know why I didn’t hand you in to our superiors?” she’d said.

He’d shaken his head, curious enough about this spurt of honesty.

“Because you’re invisible, Miles. Even here, when you’ve earned your place, you choose to go by quietly without being seen. And I daresay you do a very good job at it. We may have need of a man like you one day,” she’d said. “And I’m counting on you for it. And for many other things, some of which require visibility. That which is not visible needs to learn to be so in the eyes of those who see everything.”

Now, he continued.

“I’m someone who they won’t notice.”

“I doubt there are many Ishvalan in their army,” she said, eyebrow raised.

“I will keep these tight,” Miles said, adjusting his goggles.

There was some silence, and some murmurs from the rest of the soldiers that made Olivier tap her foot on the snow impatiently.

“General…” Buccaneer said, “in all due respect, it should be Miles who goes. They _will_ be looking for you.”

_For the woman that signed the truce and didn’t end the war_ , she thought.

She grabbed Miles’ arm tight in her glove.

“Listen to me,” she said, looking him in the eye—or the closest thing to it. “It’s in and out, do you understand? Get a general feeling of the place, what their plans are, but do not interact. I want you here in an hour.”

Her voice was firm where her eyes weren’t. He saw it again, there, perfectly hidden in blue: her fear. Not just for a woman miles away in a fort, but for him. And for his fellow men. Olivier wasn’t a woman who wasted time being afraid for herself but for the people around her. It humanized her, even if she though she hid it well most of the time.

“I won’t disappoint you, sir,” he only said.

She let him go.

“Good, I wasn’t expecting you to. Now get the hell out of here.”

He did, he disappeared into the snow. Olivier watched him go. Thankfully, the weather had been somewhat kind on them so far, but it wouldn’t last long, she had a hunch about it.

_If he’s not back within the hour, I will go drag him by the ear myself,_ she thought, even if she knew she wouldn’t do such a thing. Too much was at risk.

Olivier didn’t waste time worrying. She just watched the Drachman settlement, imagining what strategy Miles had followed. Had he knocked out a soldier and dressed in his clothes? Had he hidden close enough that he could hear what they were saying? Would he understand if they only spoke Drachman to one another? Although they would have no reason to, since they had no reason either to suspect they were being scrutinized.

She wondered—but didn’t worry—about everything until he was back, dressed in his uniform again and panting a little.

She looked at him, trying to find answers. He just shook his head.

“I didn’t have them divulge anything,” he said. “But it didn’t give me the impression that they were talking about battle plans.”

She cursed under her breath.

“We’ll need to send people in for longer periods of time,” he suggested.

She glared.

“Do you really think it wise?” she said. “If any of us gets caught, then it’s over before it’s even started.”

“How else will we find out about anything?”

_But it’s near the fifth day already,_ she thought. The younger, most naive part of her thought.

“I don’t know,” she grunted.

“I can go back in, try to find something out. My Drachman is rusty but I figure I could talk to someone long enough for something to spill out,” Miles said, trying to cheer her up.

She thought about it.

“We’ll send someone else, they might recognize you if they see you around too much.”

“They’re too many to recognize me.”

She made a committal noise.

“Should we send word to the fort that it will take us longer to come back?” Miles asked.

“I don’t see why not. But they knew, going in, this would take time.”

“Maybe,” Miles said. “But they should know that if we don’t come back, it’s not because it’s war. They should all be up to date.”

“Alright,” she said, looking convinced although she certainly didn’t need to pretend. “We’ll send someone tomorrow.”

But when tomorrow came, the men of Briggs found out they had been locked inside their cave by a massive curtain of snow falling outside, the wind ranging between the snowflakes, hissing angrily and refusing to let anyone through.

Olivier looked at it, sheltered in her sleeping bag, and felt tempted to go out there and cut it all up with her sword, make her way back to the fort as a messenger and bury her face in Zinnia’s neck to tell her what the plan was.

But Miles caught her with her eyes on the storm, and shook his head slowly. She didn’t need him to elaborate, she knew he wouldn’t let her or anyone cross that blizzard for the life of him.

There was some talk on that first day about who to send when the storm cleared, or even when it wasn’t at its most furious, but when they tried to ascertain if it was even weather one could walk in, they’d all realized it would be impossible to go back to Briggs. The only they might still do is send a spy over to Drachma, because Olivier refused to sit tight for days until the sky cleared and come back home with her hands empty.

On the first day of the storm, they managed to sneak Miles back into the Drachman formations, and he returned with some more information regarding something about ‘crimson’ and a plan, but nothing else. On the second, the other soldier they sent to spy on Drachma lasted an hour and had to come back, frozen to bits. On the third, they woke up to a dead body by the edge of the cave. The cold had seeped in too far and killed him.

They couldn’t even bury him.

It was too cold, too windy to go outside.

Instead, they sat and mourned.

Olivier, though, Olivier grew _angry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a little bit earlier than usual because lately I've replaced my posting time with the writing of the first original project I've tackled in six or so years ^^

**Author's Note:**

> I babble a lot about how my fics are coming along on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/fic_flower), and I also retweet pretty things and experience many feels in many languages ^^

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Won't Leave You Behind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630031) by [LittleDesertFlower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower)




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